


A Sickness Within

by ArtDeco



Category: The Halcyon (TV)
Genre: M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-09-27 22:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10054118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtDeco/pseuds/ArtDeco
Summary: ‘“It’s like a cancer, darling; the longer we ignore it, the more difficult it will be to cure.”’Toby is careless. Now he has a choice to make.





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

Toby had always known that it was a matter of time, and had always known that, when that time came, it would be his fault.

It had been, in fact, so spectacularly his fault that he couldn’t see how even Adil, who was always so chivalrous about Toby’s shortcomings, could manage to split the blame.

Suspended in the joy of their reconciliation, elated by the news of Mr D’Aberville’s demise, they had grown giddy. As winter gave way to spring, giddiness had given way to carelessness; as spring became summer, carelessness had become recklessness. They were young, and in love, and they were survivors: of a blackmail attempt, a bombing raid, a room of poison gas. They had felt untouchable, and had almost believed it.

Emma’s scream had been piercing and, Toby had thought as they sprung apart, rather unnecessary. It had simply been a kiss; one with Adil pressed up against the wall of the wine cellar, his hands tight in Toby’s hair, Toby’s hands firm on his hips. Toby was quite sure that Emma had indulged in similar with Freddie in the assistant manager’s office.

She had recovered quickly. She had asked Adil to retrieve a bottle of champagne and place it on ice, then thrown Toby a look so wounded, so akin to disappointment, that the adrenaline still thumping through him had been supplanted by cold, twisting fear.

He had sprinted after her, Adil’s terrified eyes sending him stumbling up the cellar steps. He could hear her heels clicking rapidly along the corridor, and he wondered, afterwards, whether he might have saved them had he not been pounced upon by Mrs Hobbs. She had begun wittering some nonsense about the books in his room-

“ – it’s most inconvenient, sir, the maids simply cannot perform their duties-”

Blocking his path, even as Toby had shifted from foot to foot, craning his neck over her head-

“ – if you might stack them in some sort of pile, sir, so as to leave the desk clear for-”

And all the time Emma’s footsteps had grown fainter, drawing further and further away from him, along with any chance he had to appeal to her before their world was brought crashing down about their ears-

“ – perhaps investing in a bookcase, sir, might make life simpler for all parties-”

Toby had run for it. He had pelted the length of the corridor and burst unceremoniously into the manager’s office. Mr Garland had looked up from his newspaper in alarm.

“Is everything alright, Mr Hamilton?”

Toby had looked around wildly, but the room was empty. Emma couldn’t have told him and departed that quickly. Which meant-

“Oh, God,” Toby had said aloud, or he might simply have thought it; he couldn’t remember. But then he had retreated from Mr Garland’s office, hurtling past Adil on the back stairs. Adil may have called out, but Toby had been intent, the blood pounding in his ears as he took the stairs two at a time, crashing through the musicians’ door and into the crowded bar.

He skidded to a halt. Betsey was singing _Sentimental Journey_ so huskily it sounded almost improper. Across the dancefloor, Emma was speaking urgently into Freddie’s ear. There was a slight frown creasing his brow, but otherwise his face was blank, and Toby had allowed himself to hope, for a moment, that they had been granted a reprieve.

But then Freddie’s expression had changed. In the time it had taken for a couple to drift across Toby’s line of vision, the colour had drained from Freddie’s face. The furrow of his brow had deepened and he had pulled away from Emma, rising to his feet; his mouth was moving, and Toby couldn’t make out what he was saying, but then his gaze had swivelled across the dancefloor to the bar, where Adil was pouring champagne for a newly-engaged couple with shaking hands.

Freddie had looked back at Emma. Emma had given a short nod. And Toby, the molten panic in his chest hardening into ice, had known that their time was up.

***

An hour later, he receives the summons to his mother’s suite. He drags his feet, wondering if this is perhaps how condemned men feel on their journey to the gallows, and knocks, stupidly, before he enters.

He’s unnerved to see not only his mother, but Freddie, Emma, and Mr Garland. None of them are seated. Emma looks to be on the verge of the tears; Mr Garland’s face is hazardously blank; and Freddie’s brow is furrowed so deeply he’s at risk of going cross-eyed.

“Toby,” his mother says. Her tones are clipped. “Miss Garland has come to me-”

“She came to _me_ ,” Freddie interjected, “You only know because-”

“Quiet!” She looks at Emma, and her gaze is glacial. “Miss Garland has- expressed- a serious insinuation. A very serious insinuation. Of a criminal nature.”

“I see,” Toby says carefully. His mind is whirring, and he decides to play for time; he arranges his expression into one of polite interest.

“Miss Garland has stated that she stumbled upon you and one of the _barmen_ -” Toby is sure she would be laughing if she wasn’t so incensed- “A Mr Joshi, engaging in improper conduct. In the wine cellar,” she adds, her nose wrinkling as if that were the part which most offended her.

“What sort of improper conduct?” Toby asks.

“They were kissing,” Emma says angrily, before Lady Hamilton can respond. “Can’t we call a spade a spade?”

“Emma,” her father says warningly.

“I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade,” Lady Hamilton says, her eyes flashing, though Toby wonders whether her choice of quotation is entirely appropriate in the circumstances. “Clearly you are rather more familiar with the sphere of spades than I might have expected.”

“Mother-” Freddie protests.

“Very well,” Lady Hamilton says, drawing herself up grandly as she glares down at Emma, “Miss Garland informed your brother that she witnessed you and this Mr Joshi kissing in the wine cellar earlier this evening. When you saw her, you broke apart, but she believes that the activity had been… in motion, for several minutes. Your brother was, unsurprisingly, distressed, and was in the process of giving Mr Joshi his notice-”

Toby’s blood runs cold.

“ – When Mr Garland intervened and brought the matter to my attention.”

Lady Hamilton terminates her scrutiny of Emma to look at Toby. Her expression is austere but her gaze is open; she seems to be inviting him to join her in her indignation.

“Naturally I will not permit slander in my hotel, nor for my family to become the subject of dishonest, licentious gossip. Miss Garland has been dismissed with immediate effect-”

“Wait!” Toby interjects.

“I will hear no pleading in her defence, Toby,” she says severely, “I’ve withstood quite enough of that from your brother. I repeat, Miss Garland will be-”

“No, no, you can’t.”

Toby’s palms are sweating. His heart beats a tattoo against his ribs, because he has already endured the hatred of one parent, and he cannot bear to provoke it in another.

“You can’t dismiss Emma, Mother, because- b-because I-”

He presses the heel of his palm to his forehead, and screws his eyes shut.

“ – Because she’s telling the truth.”

There is a short intake of breath from someone, but Toby keeps his eyes closed, as though their disgust might somehow be easier to bear if he cannot see it.

“I was there. With Adil. We were kissing. It’s just as she said.” He opens his eyes, and his hand is trembling, so he brings it back down to his side. “She isn’t lying, Mother. You can’t dismiss her. It isn’t right. She could have called the police but she didn’t.”

 _She could have kept silent, but she didn’t do that either_ , a tiny voice remarks inside his head, but he pushes it away. She was in shock. She didn’t tell her father. She only told Freddie. She surely hadn’t meant for the information to go further.

He stares at a chair leg in the silence. He can feel the anxiety building, feel the breath beginning to catch in his throat, and he thinks of Adil, his steady hands on his elbows, his soothing voice telling him to breathe slowly in and out-

“Who else knows?” he hears himself say. He doesn’t look away from the chair leg.

“No-one outside of this room,” says Mr Garland’s voice. “Except for Mr Joshi, of course.”

Toby feels a flicker a relief.

“Go and fetch this Mr Joshi,” his mother commands, and Toby’s head jerks up, but she is addressing Mr Garland. “I’d like to establish exactly how he managed to seduce my son.”

“He didn’t seduce me!” Toby splutters. He feels himself turning red. “I know my own mind, Mother, give me some credit.”

“Who initiated this sordid business?”

“He did, but-”

Lady Hamilton looks coldly triumphant. “The scheming waiter spies a wealthy young man, vulnerable after the death of his father, and sees a source of a little extra pocket money.”

“With all due respect, Mother, we aren’t in a novel by Thomas Hardy,” Freddie says.

“Perhaps Emma and I-” Mr Garland begins, but Lady Hamilton raises a hand for silence.

“I refuse to believe that a son of mine- son of a lord, educated at Eton and Oxford, a _gentleman_ \- could commit a criminal act without the presence of force or manipulation.”

“He would never force me, never,” Toby says vehemently, “He isn’t like that. Freddie’s right: I’m not Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Adil is certainly not Alec.”

“Mr Garland, why are you still here?” Lady Hamilton barks.

“Emma,” Toby says urgently, before Mr Garland can move, “I’m sorry that you saw us. It was reckless and irresponsible and I take the blame entirely. Mr Garland, I know things might have turned out differently if someone else had found us, and I apologise for placing a member of your staff in danger. Mother, Freddie, I’m sorry for jeopardising the reputation of this family and this hotel. I was careless. I wasn’t thinking.”

Toby takes a steadying breath. He isn’t naïve enough to think they might be completely out of the woods, but the police aren’t on their way and his mother hasn’t yet thrown him out of the front doors and locked them behind her. If he can only keep his head and keep Adil out of the room, he might be able to steer them shy of complete catastrophe.

“‘He would never force me’,” Lady Hamilton repeats slowly. “‘He isn’t like that.’”

“That’s right,” Toby says. He can hardly dare to breathe.

Something else besides anger flickers in his mother’s face.

“Toby, you make it sound as though you- as though tonight wasn’t the first time.” Her voice is frighteningly soft. “As though this has happened before.”

Blood rushes to Toby’s head, and the faces turned towards him are suddenly rigid and uncompromising; Emma’s eyes no longer glisten with tears, and Freddie looks faintly nauseated. Only Mr Garland appears unmoved, but his expression is grave, and Toby wonders whether he is thinking back to last December, and what the incriminating details Mr D’Aberville had discovered might have been.

“I love him,” Toby says desperately. “I love him with everything that I am, and if you send him away then I will follow him and I won’t come back.”

“There’s no need for theatrics,” Lady Hamilton says, but her voice is unsteady. For a moment, it is as though the entire room is holding its breath. Then she turns to Emma.

“Miss Garland, thank you for bringing this matter to my attention. Now I would like to speak with my sons in private.”

“Would you still like to see Mr Joshi, Lady Hamilton?” Mr Garland asks, and Toby suddenly longs for Adil’s presence, for the strength his kind, thin face will give him.

“I think not.”

She catches Emma’s arm as she moves past her towards the door. “If the tiniest detail of this is breathed to anyone, I shall know. And I shall know who breathed it.”

Emma’s fingers brush against Freddie’s as she leaves. She doesn’t look at Toby. The door closes behind her and her father with a click. The fire spits mildly in the silence.

“How long has this been going on?”

Toby starts, although Freddie doesn’t sound angry.

“Eight months.” Toby’s hands are so clammy he almost twists his ring off his finger.

Freddie seems taken aback. He eyes Toby critically, as though looking for a clue, a sign he might have missed, and Toby feels a spark of frustration that he could be so obvious.

“The collar of your dinner jacket is velvet,” he says eventually.

“What about it?”

“Is it new?”

Toby rolls his eyes. “Freddie, I’m hardly a Savile Row dandy.”

“Apparently you’re as queer.”

Toby flinches.

“Freddie, if you do not have anything useful to contribute, you will kindly return the bar.”

At Lady Hamilton’s single arched eyebrow, Freddie yields. He sinks into a chair and stares stonily ahead of him.

“Toby, darling,” Lady Hamilton says, turning to him, and Toby can hear the effort behind the gentleness, “You mustn’t be embarrassed. If he forced you-”

“He didn’t force me.”

“ – No-one would think any less of you. You don’t have to protect him.”

“He didn’t force me.”

Lady Hamilton clicks her tongue impatiently, before altering her line of attack.

“I understand- how lonely you must have been, after your father died-”

“This has nothing to do with him.”

“For heaven’s sake, would you let her finish a sentence?” Freddie snaps.

“Why don’t you run back to Emma and have another tête-à-tête about my private life?”

“Boys!” Lady Hamilton’s lips had pursed; a dangerous sign. “Toby, sit down.”

She points to the armchair beside the fireplace, leaving no room for argument, and Toby sinks into it cautiously. Lady Hamilton waits, then sits beside Freddie; with the hearthrug between them, Toby feels ominously outnumbered.

“Toby,” she says firmly, “There are several things I would like to ask you. I need you to listen carefully, and to answer my questions honestly. Can you do that?”

“I can if _he-_ ” Toby nods at Freddie- “Promises not to be offensive.”

“ _Me_ offensive?” Freddie scoffs. “I wasn’t the one getting my end away with the barman.”

“One more vulgar remark and you will leave, Freddie, I mean it.”

Freddie crosses his arms and sits back in his chair. He turns his head away.

“Now, darling,” Lady Hamilton says. Her smile looks almost painful. “This man. Mr Joshi. What were the nature of his advances? Did he ever approach you aggressively?”

“No.”

“Did you ever feel compelled into any intimate acts?”

“No.”

“But he did initiate the- the association?”

“I suppose.” Toby thinks. “He kissed me, in the wine store-”

“When?”

“Last September. During the Ashworths’ wedding reception.”

Lady Hamilton closes her eyes briefly. “And then?”

“I- I was afraid, I suppose. I didn’t understand. I didn’t know that- that’s what I was. Am.”

“I see.”

“And the next day, he came to my room. He apologised. He offered to leave. But I felt…”

Toby ducks his head. It feels like a betrayal, to share this most intimate of their secrets.

“I felt as though I made sense, for the first time in my life. As though the final piece of the puzzle had been slotted in. I felt like I knew who I was, and that before that morning I had simply been fumbling blindly in the dark.” Toby’s mouth curves slightly in spite of itself. “ _I_ kissed _him_ , that time. And since then, he’s been coming to see me at nights; sometimes I sneak out to see him, when he doesn’t have a late shift. Do you remember when I visited Edward Stockton in Wales?”

“Yes.” Lady Hamilton sounds wary.

“He was in Madrid. Adil and I spent the week in a cottage in Dartmoor.”

“God almighty,” Freddie whispers.

“So don’t you see?” Toby leans forward, his gaze flicking between them. “I know it sounds quite, quite mad, but I love him. The way I feel- it’s exactly what I read about, which I know sounds nauseating and I _know_ you think it’s wrong but it isn’t, it isn’t. I have never been happier than during the evenings I have spent with him. And I don’t mean like that,” he says, as Freddie opens his mouth. “When I’m with him… I feel like I matter. I feel as though I may actually have something worth giving.”

Toby looks down at his ring, feeling spent. He knows he’ll be alright; his mother and Freddie might be angry, they might not understand, but they won’t hate him, not like his father. They might say hurtful things, in the future, when they’re frightened or enraged or upset, but they won’t mean to hurt him. Toby understands the difference. And eventually, perhaps, they might come to accept it; or at least learn how to live with it.

“Toby,” Lady Hamilton says. Toby looks up hesitantly, and he’s taken aback by the wetness in her eyes. “Toby, I don’t think you understand how unwell you are.”

Toby’s stomach drops. “I-”

“Toby, please. I need you to keep listening to me very carefully, and not interrupt me.”

Lady Hamilton crosses the room in a fluid motion, and kneels in front of him. She places an elegant, long-fingered hand on the side of his face, and Toby is so stunned by the uncharacteristic display of affection that he almost misses what she says next.

“Toby, some men indulge in this sort of behaviour for no more than instant gratification. These are the sort of men you read about in the papers; the ones who lurk in public bathrooms and saunas and parks. These are the sort of men who are prosecuted for gross indecency. You’ve heard about those men, haven’t you, Toby?”

Toby nods dumbly.

“Many of these men are so sexually dissatisfied that they feel they have no choice but to sink to these depths. Others are afflicted with perverse sexual desires which they are not strong enough to resist.” Lady Hamilton strokes his hair tenderly. “These desires can be the result of many things: trauma, molestation, psychological weakness. But one thing which all of these men have in common, whether or not they are picked up by the police, is that they are all dreadfully unhappy. They are all unwell.”

“I haven’t done any of those things.” Toby says hoarsely. “It’s only ever been Adil.”

“Then there are other men, Toby,” Lady Hamilton continues, as though he hasn’t spoken, “Other men who, like you, are too good and too pure to indulge their urges in that- that grubby manner. They are taken in, they are manipulated, they are persuaded that what they feel is honourable and true. They convince themselves that they are in love. It is the only way that their minds can allow their bodies to be so degraded.”

“I- I told you,” Toby stammers. The hand against his temple suddenly feels like ice. “He didn’t manipulate me, he didn’t m-make me do anything I didn’t want-”

“Toby, you said yourself that you were afraid.” Freddie is still sitting opposite him, but his expression has relaxed slightly, as though the business is finally making sense to him. “You said you didn’t understand. That you didn’t know what you were doing.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“This affliction,” Lady Hamilton says, and now both of her hands are on Toby’s face, trapping his gaze on hers, “It’s like a cancer, darling; the longer we ignore it, the more difficult it will be to cure.”

“Cure?” Toby chokes out. The word tastes rotten in his mouth.

“We must act quickly if we are to prevent it from taking hold. We have already lost eight months, and the illness may have been lying dormant for a period before that.”

“I’ll speak to Mr Garland,” Freddie says decisively. He stands up, towering over Toby, and in his officer’s uniform he looks almost regal in his masculinity. “He can make some calls, discreetly, and find the details of an institution-”

Toby is so far beyond speech that he can make nothing but a garbled noise of terror. His mother shushes him, stroking his hair again like a frightened animal.

“ _Not_ an institution,” she says reprovingly, “He isn’t mad. He’s ill. He needs a clinic.”

“Yes. Yes, I see. Cure the body alongside the mind.”

His mother and Freddie smile at each other, united in their relief, and Toby finds his voice again.

“You can’t,” he says shakily. He thinks he might be sick. “This isn’t- I’m not- this isn’t an illness, or- or a disease, or something to be fixed.” He looks between their soft, sympathetic expressions, and changes tack. “In any case, you can’t do anything without my consent. I’m twenty-four, and I’m not mad, you just said so yourself, so you can’t force me.” He pushes himself up, out of the armchair and away from his mother’s hands. “I’m not ill. There’s nothing wrong with me. I don’t need to be cured.”

“Toby, please don’t be difficult,” Lady Hamilton says, and the clipped tones have returned, “You must understand that you aren’t in your right mind-”

“You just said I wasn’t mad!”

“It’s for your own good, Toby,” Freddie says kindly. “This is all for your own good.”

There’s a flash of something – the surface of a desk, cold wood against his forehead, the agony of leather on flesh as his father’s voice echoes harshly in his ears – and Toby doesn’t realise how violently he’s trembling until hands which aren’t his grasp his shoulders. But the grip is too firm, the vowels too well-rounded for it to be Adil, and Toby tenses, straining to breathe, straining to think past the burning in his chest and his brain and his eyes.

“Toby, calm down,” a voice says, and Toby shakes his head frantically because he knows that after the pain comes the words, the snarling, spitting, sneering contempt, and _I must try harder I must do better it’s for my own good_ rings in his head until it aches.

There are softer hands on him then, but one of them grips the back of his neck like a vice. Something cold is forced into his hand, and his head is suddenly pulled back, the hand holding the cold thing forced upwards, until something bitter hits his tongue and scorches the back of his throat.

The cold thing is taken from his hand. The bitterness has sliced through the burning and the cloudiness, and Toby finds he can take deeper and deeper breaths, until after a few minutes, he’s able to breathe quite normally again. He shivers, and realises he’s drenched in cold sweat. He looks up through his damp fringe.

Freddie and his mother, holding a whiskey glass, are staring at him. Their pity is so undisguised that Toby’s stomach twists. He pushes his hair back, feeling another tiny pull of panic, but Adil’s soft voice whispers to him, and he takes a steadying breath.

“What will happen to Adil?”

“He’ll have to be dismissed, Toby,” Freddie says. “There’s no possible way he can stay.”

“Then won’t Emma have to be dismissed too?” Toby’s voice is weak with exhaustion.

Freddie closes his eyes for a moment, as though praying for patience.

“It isn’t the same, Toby. You know it isn’t the same.”

Toby thinks of Adil’s eyes, wide with terror in the wine cellar. He thinks of him being reprimanded by Freddie, in front of Emma and Mr Garland, whilst Toby hid upstairs. He thinks of him leaving the following morning, without notice and without a reference. He thinks of the calls Lady Hamilton will make to the other five-star London hotels; of the calls _they_ will make to the lesser establishments, and of those to the nightclubs, and of those to the public houses. He thinks of how Adil will never find another job as a barman in London, and then of the choices he will be left with: to leave the city to find work, moving away from his family and from Toby, or to face deportation as an unemployed Indian national who was not born in this country.

Unless he enlists. Loses his leg or his arm or his life. Because Toby had been too careless to lock the cellar door.

Toby’s jaw clenches. His stomach twists, but he thinks of the eyes, and the voice, and the skilled, gentle fingers, and he digs his nails into the palms of his hands.

“Let him stay and I’ll go to a clinic.”

Freddie’s eyebrows shoot upwards.

“Impossible,” Lady Hamilton says at once.

“If you let him stay, I’ll cooperate. I won’t fight you. I won’t make a scene or cause a scandal. I’ll go quietly to wherever Mr Garland finds. But only if you let him stay, and only if you treat him exactly as you have always treated him.” A muscle jumps in his cheek. “And only if you do not tell anyone, including Adil, where I have gone.”

***

Later, in his suite, Toby’s body convulses as he vomits into the toilet bowl.

***

Toby doesn’t drift off until almost three o’clock, and he awakes before six with a tight, twisting sensation in his gut. His chest lurches when he hears a quiet knock on his door, half-convinced that Emma has broken her word and the police are waiting outside. But then he hears the clink of china along with another, more urgent knock, and he slides out of bed to crack open the door.

“You mustn’t be here,” he whispers to a white-clad shoulder, “If anyone sees you-”

“Please, let me in.”

“What if-”

“Toby, I must know what’s going on.”

Toby’s chest clenches again, but Adil’s eyes are so worried that he relents. “Alright,” he says, stepping back, “We can’t very well talk in the corridor.”

Adil sets down the tray, and Toby retreats, pulling his dressing gown tighter about him.

“We’ll have to be quick,” he says, still half-whispering, “They might be keeping watch.”

“What happened?”

Adil looks as though he hasn’t slept. He doesn’t move from the table, and for once Toby is glad of his distance, of the space it gives him to think.

“It wasn’t so very terrible,” he says, with what he hopes is a nonchalant shrug, “A fair bit of ranting and raving, mostly about the family name, reputation, etcetera, etcetera, but you know my mother. She lives on drama.”

“Toby, we aren’t talking about a poor school report. What’s going to happen to us? Will they give me my notice?” Adil’s eyes suddenly widen. “They won’t report us?”

“No,” Toby says, and Adil exhales shakily. He’d been thinking about how best to explain the situation, and he decides that the loosest form of the truth is perhaps the safest path. “No, they won’t report us, either of us; and you won’t be given notice.”

Adil’s expression has crumpled in relief. “How in God’s name did you manage that?”

“Mother calmed down a little once she’d ejected Emma and Mr Garland. I told her the truth- well, the selected highlights- and she wasn’t truly angry. Neither was Freddie, not really. Chiefly worried, I think.” He swallows. “But I will have to go away for a while.”

“Go away?”

“Mother thinks I need a- a little break. To think things through, make sure I haven’t had my head turned by a whirlwind romance.” He forces a laugh. “So I’ll be spending a few weeks in the country.”

“On your own?”

“No, with- with friends, I should think. Mother might come too, if she can get away, but it’s all rather up in the air at the moment. We’re still settling the details.”

“What about your work?”

Toby shrugs again. “I’m due a holiday.”

Adil’s brow has furrowed. He looks uncomfortable. He crosses the room, steps soft as a cat’s, and Toby fights with himself not to take a step back.

“Toby,” he says, in the tone he uses when Toby is flustered or panicky or temporarily _sans esprit_ , “You must make sure you know exactly where they’re sending you.”

He looks at Toby expectantly. He makes to take his hands, then seems to think better of it.

“I don’t follow,” Toby says carefully.

Adil sighs. “It just seems a little rummy. We’re caught breaking the law, yet I get to keep my job and you get a holiday. Where’s the catch?”

“Why should there be a catch?” Toby says snappishly. “And in any case, they were hardly thrilled by it. I had a job convincing them you hadn’t forced me. They most likely think it’s nerve strain clouding my judgement, and that a quiet fortnight in the country will set me back on the path to virtue.” He attempts a smile. “Anyhow, I told them that if they did dismiss you, I’d leave with you and I wouldn’t come back.”

Adil’s face softens in pleasure, and Toby aches with the desire to kiss him.

“That was brave of you.”

“It didn’t go down well, but it seems to have done the trick. And you must tell me if they’ve mistreated you when- when I get back.”

Adil reaches out to touch his face, and Toby leans into it in spite of himself.

“What _does_ happen when you get back?”

“I don’t know,” Toby says honestly. “I’ll give it some thought when I’m away.”

“Can I write to you? Telephone?”

“No,” Toby says immediately, ignoring the pang in his chest as Adil’s face falls. “They might intercept it, and I don’t think I could brazen it out a second time.”

Adil brushes his thumb over Toby’s cheekbone. “When do you go?”

“I don’t know.” He hesitates for a moment. “I’ll telephone Edward Stockton – the chap who covered for me when we went to Dartmoor – and see if I can wangle a week or two with him at his estate. It might even be fun,” he says bravely. “His library is to die for.”

Adil’s other hand cups his neck. His face is full of tenderness. “I suppose we should keep our distance until you go,” he says sadly.

“I think it would be best,” Toby agrees, although he can feel his heart splintering as he says it. “A few weeks’ MIA and it should all blow over.”

He thinks of pills and white coats and solitary confinement, and a sudden bolt of terror flashes through him. He grips Adil’s elbows, pressing their foreheads together urgently.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, “It’s my fault. I’ve ruined everything. I could have landed us in prison, and now things will be awkward for you downstairs. You’ve every right to be furious.”

“Toby,” Adil says softly, and Toby’s eyes flutter closed, “This is not your fault.”

Toby wants to push him away, wants to shake him and rage at him for his benevolence.

“I love you,” he says instead, swallowing thickly, and he kisses him, fierce and slick as his hands run over every inch of Adil he can reach; committing him to memory.

“It will be alright,” Adil whispers, once they’ve broken apart. His breath is hot on Toby’s mouth. “With our combined ingenuity we’re sure to come up with something.”

“Look after yourself,” Toby says. His voice catches, and Adil’s hands tighten on his waist.

“And you, my darling.”

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For another, rather more cheerful 'discovery' fic, I recommend the exquisite 'Exactly What It Looks Like' by clueing_for_looks, a line in which in fact inspired this story.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

Mr Garland is both discreet and swift, and, three days later, Toby requests a fortnight’s leave of absence from the office. The head of his department mutters something about spies turned slackers, and Toby is on the verge of saying something he very much doubts he’ll regret; but then Miss Edwards has a quiet word in his ear, and on Friday evening she waves him off with good wishes for his trip to Wales. He sleeps in late on Saturday and doesn’t come down for lunch; he packs, unpacks, then packs again, and by dinner he is so tightly wound that he knocks over his glass of red wine and ruins the white lace tablecloth. His mother clicks her tongue, but she hardly touches her food. When Toby crosses the lobby, he catches Emma’s eye; her smile is tight and professional, and he wonders how much of her indifference is the result of awkwardness, and how much of it, now, might be something else. His brother is back at base, and Toby hopes he might telephone, but no message is brought to his room.

He isn’t surprised when his coffee is brought up by Tom. He daren’t ask after Adil, but he rambles at length about his impending trip west, and hopes Tom’s tongue is loose enough to spread the word downstairs.

Lady Hamilton tuts at the dark circles under his eyes the next morning. The day is warm, but with rain in the air; church, which can so often drag, passes in a blur, and Toby excuses himself from lunch. He sits at his desk, staring at the same page of his book for almost forty-five minutes until there is a sharp knock on his door.

“The car is ready, Mr Hamilton,” Tom says. “Oh, and I’ve something for you from Mr Joshi.”

Toby’s head jerks up, and Tom holds out a copy of _Native Son_.

“He says you lent him this, and he wanted to return it before you left for Wales. He said you wanted to take it with you. He’d have come himself, but Mr Garland needed him.”

Toby blinks. He can’t think why Adil would want him to take it – Toby had bought it for him for Christmas – but he slips it into his jacket pocket. It might help to pass the time.

Tom carries his suitcase downstairs. Warm breeze blows his hair into his eyes as they emerge onto the front steps, and, looking across the empty road, Toby briefly considers making a run for it; but Lady Hamilton and Mr Garland are watching him, and he refuses to make a spectacle of himself with Feldman and Wilfred lurking by the doors.

It had taken several days to persuade his mother not to accompany him, and she presses a hard, tight-jawed kiss to his cheek.

“Be good,” she says. Her voice is strung taut with emotion.

“Enjoy Wales, Mr Hamilton,” Mr Garland says, and Toby wants to give him a hard shove.

The chauffeur doesn’t make conversation, and Toby is glad of it, for he feels that if he opens his mouth he might not be in command of what comes out. It is a short drive to King’s Cross, and the chauffeur lifts Toby’s case from the boot.

“Shall I wait until you find a porter, sir?”

“No need, Meade, thank you. I can manage from here.”

Toby tips him mechanically, then makes a show of consulting his wristwatch as he walks up the station steps. He loiters in the foyer, until he’s quite sure the car has driven off, before he takes Mr Garland’s directions from his pocket. He considers, once again, the possibility of escape; of simply hopping onto a train, perhaps really going to Wales, or to stay with friends in Yorkshire or Cornwall or Scotland. Perhaps travelling to the coast. The urge to run is so persuasive that Toby almost takes another step inside the foyer.

The station clock chimes quarter to two, and he returns to the pavement.

The clinic is a ten minute walk from the station, in a built-up, relatively respectable area of the city. It is a plain, unobtrusive building: red-brick, shuttered windows, black iron railings. It appears almost squashed from the outside, as though it has sunk one storey into the ground, but the lettering above the door is neat and professional.

 _The Islington Centre for Therapeutics_.

“Dr Walsingham is quite an expert in his field,” Lady Hamilton had said briskly over dinner, once Mr Garland had made the arrangements, “His methods are most effective. I’ve heard Lady Steadman’s nephew was treated there.”

As Lady Steadman’s nephew was now married with two daughters, Toby had supposed there might be some merit in Dr Walsingham’s methods. The notion had not put him at ease.

The foyer is low-ceilinged and windowless, with dark wood panelling which Toby finds rather oppressive. His suitcase drops loudly onto the black and white tiles, and a young woman, balancing a pince-nez on her nose, looks up from behind the reception desk.

“Yes?” she says, rather imperiously, “May I help you?” Behind the pince-nez, her eyes flick down to his gold tie-pin. “Sir.”

Toby bristles. “I wonder,” he says tartly. “I have an appointment with Dr Walsingham.”

The pince-nez wobbles as the woman does the minutest of double-takes.

“I see,” she says, sounding somehow more suspicious now, and glances down at what Toby supposes is an appointment book. “Name, please?”

“Mr Lawrence.”

“Well. If you’d like to follow me, Dr Walsingham will see you in his consultation room.”

“What about my luggage?”

Pince-Nez’s nostrils flare imperceptibly. “I daresay you can manage.”

Toby scowls at her back, but snatches up his suitcase and follows her through a heavy wooden door. She leads him through a corridor, narrow and panelled with walnut, but with maroon carpet instead of mosaic tiles. The walls are empty except for lines of doors, each bearing a doctor’s nameplate and a single, frosted-glass window. The electric lights have no shades, and the brightness of the naked bulbs stings Toby’s eyes.

They are nearing the end of the corridor when Pince-Nez stops abruptly beside a door. Toby hesitates, eying the handle as though it might bite him; he wonders whether he ought to knock, but Pince-Nez’s lip is curling, and he raises his chin and pushes open the door.

The office is small and, like the foyer, windowless. The wallpaper is heavy damask, the carpet thick and dark, and had it not been for the large, overbearing desk facing him, Toby might have felt he had stumbled into the antechamber of a boudoir. The room is otherwise empty aside from several hard-backed chairs, a wastepaper basket, and two tall bookcases, their contents neatly arranged.

“Mr Lawrence,” Dr Walsingham says, rising to greet him. Toby is relieved at the absence of a white coat. “Thank you for coming.”

“Thank you for giving up your time,” Toby says stiffly, and shakes the proffered hand across the large expanse of the desk. The doctor is tall like his father, but his hair is blonde rather than grey, and he appears to be no older than his mid-forties. His eyes are small and his ears are rather prominent, which, with the paleness of his blonde eyebrows, gives him the look of a slightly sceptical weasel. He gestures for Toby to sit, and for a moment he simply stares at him, unblinking, across the desk. Toby tries not to shift, but he has the uncomfortable notion that he is being assessed, and wonders whether or not he ought to feel relieved when it appears he has passed.

“I gather you didn’t make your own appointment, Mr Lawrence?”

Toby swallows. He had expected several minutes of pleasantries, perhaps tea.

“No,” he says cautiously, “It was- a family friend.”

“A close family friend?”

“Close enough.”

“According to Janice-” Toby supposes this must be Pince-Nez- “Your friend was rather reticent over the telephone as to the exact nature of your condition.”

Toby fights the urge to click his tongue. “And yet here we are.”

Walsingham cocks a pale eyebrow and looks at him again, unruffled, and this time Toby does shift in his seat.

“It is important that you are here of your own volition, Mr Lawrence,” Walsingham says eventually. “The treatment can only succeed if the patient is fully committed to recovery.”

Toby feels his shoulders square defiantly. “I am here of my own volition.”

“Your body and your mind are currently afflicted by a cancerous growth, Mr Lawrence, and to be rid of it requires neither a simple nor a pleasant course of treatment.” Walsingham laces his fingers together as they rest on the desk. “The following fortnight will test both your physical and mental endurance. I cannot in good conscience subject you to it if you are not certain in your consent.”

“Forgive me, but I don’t quite understand.” The room is airless, stale for lack of ventilation, and a light film of sweat breaks out on the back of Toby’s neck. “I was under the impression that this is a clinic of therapeutics.”

“That is correct, Mr Lawrence.”

“Then I- what I mean is-”

He exhales in frustration. Walsingham’s mouth curves into a polite, benign smile; Toby supposes it is intended to be encouraging.

“What I mean, Dr Walsingham, is that I’m curious as to how physical endurance is- well, how that might come into it. My mo- that is to say, my understanding is that the primary element of this treatment- indeed, therapeutic treatment in general- is psychiatric.”

“Indeed?” Walsingham’s smile has wilted. “Well, combatting the psychological perversion is certainly an essential component: curing the cancer of the mind, as it were.”

“I see.” Toby wipes his palms on the fabric of his trousers. “And I suppose that that is physically- as well as mentally- taxing?”

“Habitually, yes. But this is a corporeal illness, and as such the symptoms must be tackled via a more- ah- practical approach.” Walsingham’s pale eyebrows furrow. “My patients are usually more informed of my practices before they approach me, Mr Lawrence. Often it takes months, sometimes even years, before they muster the courage to take the plunge.”

Something tightens in Toby’s chest. “Well, I’m afraid this was all rather hurried, you see. I didn’t want to wait- in case I lost my nerve,” he invents, and forces a laugh, which even to his own ears sounds slightly hysterical.

Walsingham sits back in his chair. Toby feels a bead of sweat trickle down his back.

“You are not the youngest patient I have treated, Mr Lawrence,” he says slowly. “But many men simply close their eyes to it, and do not seek treatment until their thirties or forties. By then, I am afraid, it is often too late. So I am grateful that you have come to me now, before the illness, pernicious as it is, has the chance to truly take hold." Walsingham eyes him contemplatively. “I will be frank with you, Mr Lawrence, for it appears you have stumbled to us rather blindly.”

Walsingham sits up, suddenly poker-straight. The pale eyebrows unfurl, and despite the formal, rehearsed quality of his speech, his voice is hard as iron.

“My treatment has been fine-tuned over many years of therapeutic practice, and is regarded in British medical circles as the leading procedure in combatting sexual perversion. The treatment is undertaken in three stages, each of which purges the body of unnatural cognitive response, whilst simultaneously cleansing the mind of indecent thoughts and urges. The first two stages are undertaken during your fortnight with us; the final stage is undertaken independently, and once completed, we then ascertain whether further treatment is needed.”

Toby’s tongue is thick and heavy in his mouth. He swallows, but his throat is dry, and he emits nothing but a peculiar gasping sound.

“The first stage of the treatment is electrotherapy,” Walsingham continues. “Electric current is administered to the hands and, later in the week, to the genitalia, whilst the patient is shown a series of images. These images are pornographic in nature and homosexual in content. The purpose of this treatment is to reprogram the degenerated nerve endings by teaching them to reject homosexual stimulus.”

Walsingham straightens the pen on the left of his desk so it no longer touches the pencil.

“The second stage of the treatment is aversion therapy. This can be rather unpleasant, I’m afraid, but, provided the patient has the necessary willpower, extremely effective. Electrotherapy is discontinued; instead, in the early evening, you will be provided with a range of homosexual stimuli. You are encouraged to engage with these stimuli. After a short period, an injection will be administered which provokes nausea. You must continue to engage with the stimuli until you vomit. Over the course of the week, the number of injections administered per evening will increase. The value of this stage of the therapy is that it encompasses both the body and the mind: provoking a disagreeable physical reaction in response to indecent mental stimulation.

“The second stage, as with the first, lasts six days, after which the patient is discharged from the clinic; in this instance, the Sunday after next. You will be provided with medication to take over the following four weeks, which consists of a daily injection and tablets to be taken twice daily, with food. After four weeks, you will return to the clinic for a short assessment, and we will discuss what, if any, further action is to be taken.”

Walsingham laces his fingers again, and peers at him almost kindly across the desk.

“I understand that that may be rather a lot to take in. Do you have any questions?”

Toby’s mouth opens loosely, then closes again. There is a rushing in his ears, and panic rises inside him like bile. It scorches his chest, his eyes, the back of his throat, and he wants to leap to his feet, to pelt from the dingy room and its stoat-like occupant, to send Janice’s pince-nez flying as he tears past her in the foyer, then run, run, run, past the steps of King’s Cross, through the lines of traffic, until he stumbles, chest heaving, stitch raging, into the bar of The Halcyon.

Adil will be surprised to see him, but he’ll listen, and he’ll believe him. He’ll tug Toby into the wine store, and his soft voice and steady hands and kind eyes will help Toby down gently from the peak.

And then Adil will be sent away. Adil will be ejected from the building and the city and the country he calls home, and Toby will be brought back to exactly where he now sits.

Toby swallows several times. “I suppose it’s- it is safe?” he asks hoarsely. His hands tremble as they grip the seat of his chair.

“Oh, yes,” Walsingham says, waving a hand dismissively, “Safe as houses.”

“What about s-side effects?”

“Nausea, insomnia, loss of appetite; nothing permanent.”

Toby imagines Adil’s reassuring grip at his elbows, holding him steady until his feet are back on the ground.

“And it is discreet?”

“Extremely. Only two other patients currently with us are receiving the same treatment, and there are no communal areas, so you will be seen by no-one except myself and one or two orderlies. And Janice,” he adds as an after-thought.

Walsingham glances at the clock on the wall behind Toby’s head, then rummages in the top drawer of his desk and pulls out a slip of paper. He picks up his pen, and pushes both across the desk.

“If you have no other questions, Mr Lawrence, would you care to sign this Form of Consent? Only, of course, if you are quite sure.”

The metal is cold between Toby’s clammy fingers. He uncaps the pen in a daze, focusing hard on the form to prevent words like ‘electric’ and ‘nausea’ and ‘pornographic’ from ringing in his ears.

“What about air raids?” he asks desperately, in a final bid for deliverance, “Surely I’d meet the other patients in the shelter? And then any hope of anonymity would-”

“Oh, no, Mr Lawrence.” Walsingham’s calm, placating smile returns. “My patients’ rooms are underground. Quite as safe as any shelter.”

Toby looks back at the form. The type is thick and black, authoritative, although they’ve misspelt his name: _Laurence_ rather than _Lawrence_. He ducks his head, so his expression is hidden from Walsingham by his fringe. Adil’s terrified eyes swim before him again, and, feeling rather like he imagines Faustus did when he handed over his soul to the Devil, he signs his name shakily on the paper.

***

Toby’s room is indeed underground. It is whitewashed and, as with seemingly every room in the building, windowless, with a single iron bedstead, a desk, a chair, and a toilet and washbasin in a small antechamber. There is no mirror. He is informed that a tin bath will be brought to his room twice weekly, pre-filled with the regulation five inches of warm water. They replace his shaving kit with a safety razor, and though the ceiling is flat and beamless, they confiscate his belt and the laces of his shoes.

He huffs indignantly as the orderlies rifle through his case. One removes his books and spreads them briskly on the bed, whilst the other consults their titles against a list.

“I’m afraid I left _Dorian Gray_ at home,” he says acidly. They ignore him, but find nothing contraband amongst his volumes on medieval England, and leave him with a pencil – blunted – and several sheets of thick, printed paper, which turn out to be a questionnaire. Toby sits at the desk wearily, and scans through the questions.

_At what age did you begin to feel sexual attraction to a member(s) of your own sex?_

_With how many members of your own sex have you engaged in anal intercourse?_

_During anal intercourse, do you take on the sexually passive or sexually active role?_

The questionnaire ends with a request for a description of his most recent sexual fantasy; Toby half-expects to see ‘For ten marks’ in brackets.

Dinner is brought to him on a tray, and he is halfway through a chapter on the etiquette of fifteenth-century witch-hunts when there is a rap on the door and a call for lights-out. Toby splutters incredulously when the orderly, straight-faced, informs him that any patient found contravening the lights-out policy forfeits a day’s worth of electricity.

“May as well be back at school,” he mutters, for it has only just gone ten o’clock; but the thought of spending a day alone in the dark in this windowless room has him flicking off the overhead light. He considers sitting up and reading by the flame of his lighter, just to be contrary, but he forgot to pack matches, and if his fluid runs out before the end of the fortnight then he’ll be subjecting himself to an entirely different test of endurance. He hadn’t banked on not being allowed out; he’d have to be strict with his Lucky Stripes.

The bed is narrower than he is used to, though not uncomfortable, but he awakes early. Disorientated by the lack of natural light, he squints at his wristwatch in the gloom. His first appointment is not until two o’clock. An orderly arrives with breakfast, and hovers, to Toby’s immense annoyance, whilst he fumbles with the blunt safety razor.

“I am quite capable of shaving unsupervised,” he says shortly.

“Patients are not permitted to be left alone with sharp objects.”

Toby grinds his teeth. “Then, if you’re staying, could you please find me a mirror?”

The orderly holds out his hand silently for the razor, and for an awful moment Toby thinks _he_ is about to begin shaving him; but he simply leaves the room and returns a few minutes later with a small hand-mirror.

“I’ll have to wait while you use it.”

“In case I smash it and use a shard to gouge out my own eyes,” Toby says, but under his breath, and props the mirror up awkwardly on the sink. He does his best, and though his mother’s nostrils would have flared, he decides the job is decent enough for a day of solitude.

The hours until his appointment crawl past. Toby attempts to finish the chapter of his book, but his mind wanders to needles and electrodes and powdery white tablets. When an orderly arrives at ten to two, he eyes Toby’s untouched lunch appraisingly.

“The clinic deals severely with any patient who puts themselves on hunger strike.”

Toby wants to slap the disapproving expression from his face.

“I’m an ovo-lacto vegetarian,” he lies.

The orderly scowls. “Dietary requirements are requested when appointments are booked.”

“Then I daresay whoever took my telephone call omitted to note it down.”

There is a moment, then the orderly smiles through gritted teeth.

“My apologies,” he says frostily, and Toby supposes that any regret the man might feel for where he is taking him has most likely now evaporated. “If you’d like to follow me.”

The orderly leads him up a flight of stone steps and into the corridor of offices from the previous afternoon. He turns right, away from the foyer, and they walk to the very end of the corridor, towards a door without a nameplate and without a frosted-glass window. He knocks twice, and at a loud ‘Come!’, opens the door and marshals Toby inside.

Toby had imagined either a grand, high-ceilinged hall, like the lecture theatre in Oxford’s department of medicine which he had once stumbled into by accident; or some form of medieval torture chamber, with water dripping down the stone walls and torches blazing in brackets. This room, in fact, is rather ordinary, only slightly larger than Walsingham’s office, though the flooring is linoleum, and the walls are painted rather than papered. The lightbulb is, again, naked, and there is a square of wood, painted to blend in with the wall, nailed neatly over what must, from the outside of the building, be a window. There is only one door, the one from which Toby has entered, and in the centre of the room is a small medical trolley covered with a sheet, and a high-backed chair.

“Good afternoon, Mr Lawrence,” Walsingham says, and Toby tears his eyes away from the trolley. Walsingham is wearing the dreaded white coat over his suit, and a new orderly, gloved, is pulling on a white antiseptic gown; Toby blinks, his eyes blurring as he attempts to distinguish where Walsingham ends and the white walls begin.

“If you’d like to hang your jacket on the back of the door, then take a seat.”

Toby obeys, and the orderly passes him as he starts towards the chair. He hears the scrape of a key in a lock, and, as he sits, sees the orderly hand the key to Walsingham.

“Now we shan’t be disturbed,” Walsingham says, smiling at Toby as he slips the key into his pocket, but the message is clear; Toby won’t be leaving until Walsingham decides he can.

Keeping his eyes averted from the trolley, Toby tries to relax, but the chair is hard and his right thigh is twitching. The orderly approaches him, and for a wild moment Toby thinks the treatment is about to begin without a word of explanation, but he halts beside Toby’s left arm. His face is sallow, but he looks little older than Toby himself.

“Could you take off your watch.”

Toby does so.

“Could you roll up your sleeves please, then turn your palms towards the ceiling.”

Toby slips his cufflinks into his trouser pocket and rolls his sleeves up to his elbows. His wrists feel oddly vulnerable, and the position is uncomfortable; he’s about to protest as the orderly presses down on his forearm, when a leather strap snakes up from underneath the armrest and is buckled around his wrist, holding his palm in place.

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” he says, in a brave attempt at Lady Hamilton’s clipped tones. Walsingham’s smile becomes almost indulgent.

“You’ll find it helps,” he says soothingly. “You’ll be able to concentrate on the pictures without the bother of trying to keep still.”

The orderly restrains his other wrist, then his elbows, before crouching down to fasten his ankles to the chair legs. Toby’s knees are forced open, and he feels a flicker of panic; Walsingham had said that the pictures would be pornographic, and sat like this- if he- they would _see_ -

“The procedure is quite simple, Mr Lawrence,” Walsingham says. His tone is brisk as he pulls on a pair of thin black leather gloves. The orderly removes the sheet covering the medical trolley, and Toby’s chest lurches; but rather than forceps and needles and vials of lurid potion, there is simply a large battery, with two thin, metal electrodes attached by wires. There is the snap of a switch, and the battery hums into life.

“In a moment, Wilson will activate the image projector. You will see a number of photographs of men engaging in homosexual relations. Wilson will rotate these images at regular intervals throughout the session. As each new image appears, I will apply electric current to your palm, alternating between each hand. The shocks will last for approximately ten seconds, and will occur every thirty seconds. I will take a two-minute rest at ten minute intervals. The treatment lasts for thirty minutes.”

Toby does some quick sums in his head. Even accounting for the breaks, he’ll be receiving almost sixty shocks.

“You may feel a certain amount of discomfort; however, it is vital that you remain focused on the images. The purpose of the treatment is to teach the body to associate homosexual urges with this discomfort. Do you understand?”

Toby nods. He tries not to pull at the straps.

Behind him, there is a click as the orderly turns off the overhead light. For a moment, the room is in darkness except for the faint, greyish glow of the battery.

The wall in front of him is suddenly disfigured by a blur of black and white. The metallic drone of the battery is joined by the higher-pitched whine of the projector; Toby blinks, his eyes adjusting, then jerks his head away, appalled, as the image twists into focus.

The photograph is of two men. Only the torso and upper thighs of the first man are visible, dominating the left side of the frame. His penis is erect and standing tall against his stomach. The second man, his face in profile, is knelt in front of the first. He is young, though certainly older than Toby, and his lips are slightly parted as though about to take the penis into his mouth. The left hand of the first man is gripping his hair.

“Please look at the image, Mr Lawrence. I cannot begin the treatment until you do so.”

Colour has rushed to Toby’s face. He forces himself to turn back to the photograph. The second man’s face is pinched, his eyes large and distant. Toby’s gaze moves to the hand in the man’s hair; he thinks of Adil’s entwined in his own, tugging gently, and feels the smallest of stirs.

The tip of the electrode presses into his flesh. Tiny currents, thin and delicate as spider silk, unfurl in the centre of his left palm and wind up his arm, splintering as they reach his bound elbow to criss-cross across his bicep. His wrist flexes as pain spikes in his shoulder, but the straps are tight; his muscles clench, and just as he begins to feel lightheaded, the tip of the electrode is removed.

“Well done, Mr Lawrence,” Walsingham says, and Toby doesn’t realise that he has been holding his breath until he exhales with a rush. He tears his eyes from the photograph.

Walsingham crosses in front of him, looking down at his wristwatch. There is a rustle of acetate, and the picture changes. The wall is now distorted by a blur of fleshy male faces, their chins and lips squashed together, and Toby jolts as the electrode is pressed firmly into his other palm. He tries to concentrate on the faces, on the slobbering lips, wondering whether he and Adil have ever looked as crude, as electricity surges up his right arm.

There is no clock in the room, and at the first ten-minute break he wonders for a moment whether half an hour has already passed. The orderly removes the most recent picture – a male hand gripping a male buttock – and the wall glows blankly with white light. The room has grown unbearably hot, and sweat soaks his underarms and the back of his shirt. The leather straps chafe against the skin of his wrists.

“Might I have some water, please?” he asks. He sounds slightly breathless, as though he has been winded.

“Later,” Walsingham says, adjusting a dial on the battery, “Once the session is complete.”

When Walsingham recommences, the voltage has increased, and the tip of the electrode is scorching against his palm. The current seems to singe his very muscle tissue, and Toby tosses his head as a fibre of pain reaches his throat, blossoming into spasm.

“Please do not struggle, Mr Lawrence.” Walsingham keeps the electrode in place until Toby regains control of his neck.

Toby had expected the pictures to become lewder as the session progressed, but he is unnerved by the oscillation between the vulgar and the almost-virtuous. Between the blurred images of nude bodies, hands on genitals, spread legs and buttocks, are softer, almost moving photographs of touching lips, interlocked hands, brushing fingertips. With his legs stretched open, Toby can do nothing to conceal his interest, but each jolt of arousal, of coiling, pulsing warmth, collides with the current from Walsingham’s electrode, until his insides feel scalded from the strain of sensation.

By the second break, he has received forty shocks, and tiny tremors have begun to dart up and down his arms. There is a sour taste in his mouth, and his chest clenches and unclenches irregularly as he tugs weakly at the restraints.

“There are six minutes left of the treatment, Mr Lawrence,” Walsingham says. “The voltage of the shocks will be increased, and current will now be applied to both palms simultaneously. The shocks will last for approximately fifteen seconds at a time.”

“Please,” Toby pants, looking up at him blearily through his damp fringe, “Please give me a- I just need a moment-”

“Wilson,” Walsingham says, looking over Toby’s head, “Place Slide 063 onto the projector.”

There is another rustle of acetate, and Toby chokes. Slide 063 is obscene: a man, large, corpulent, perhaps in his early forties, with a boy bent over a table beneath him. The man has his hands fastened over the boy’s wrists, holding them to the surface of the table, and whilst his face is contorted with exertion, the boy’s face is twisted in agony.

Toby screws his eyes shut. He remembers the coldness of wood against his bare chest, Adil’s hands, sometimes still a little sticky from alcohol, grasping at his hips; the heat of skin against his back, of hard, shaking kisses pressed against his shoulders. Something hot prickles at the corners of his eyes as he feels an unmistakeable twitch.

“Mr Lawrence.”

Toby bites down on his lip and forces his eyes open. Pain explodes in both palms, racing up his arms, across his shoulders, spreading down across his chest. There is a thumping against his ribs, and the dark heat in his navel is ravaged by the force of the electricity.

“No more,” he gasps, when the electrodes are removed, but he is paid no attention, and fifteen seconds later, the metal tips, now white-hot, are returned to his palms.

Toby’s eyes slide out of focus. He’s had Adil like that, eagerly, so eagerly that his fingers have left marks on Adil’s hips and his teeth have left bruises on his shoulders and neck. He’s always thought Adil liked it – not just because Adil tells him so, but because of the way he pushes back into him, arching, whispering encouragement in that delightfully earnest voice – but all Toby can see now is Adil as the frightened boy, trapped, in pain, whilst Toby, the huge, nightmarish monster, restrains him, hurts him, consumes him.

Toby has lost count of the shocks, and barely registers the jangle of metal on metal several minutes later, as the electrodes are returned to the medical trolley. He slumps forward, held up by the straps, twitching sporadically as the muscles in his arms convulse with spasms. He feels a hand on his shoulder, pressing him to lean against the back of the chair, and then brisk, gloved hands begin working at the straps. As the orderly stoops to unfasten his ankles, Toby looks at his wrists; deep, thick grooves have been cut into the flesh, smarting angrily against the rush of cool air, and Toby feels somehow violated, as though he has been branded in some way. His body throbs dully with unfulfilled arousal.

Slowly, Toby raises his head. Both Walsingham and the orderly are staring down at him expectantly. He realises that he’s being dismissed.

“Water,” he says hoarsely, but Walsingham turns to remove his gloves.

“There will be a glass waiting in your room.” When Toby makes no move to stand, his pale eyebrows steeple into a frown. “I do have other patients, Mr Lawrence.”

With colossal effort, Toby grips the armrests of the chair, and pushes himself unsteadily to his feet. His arms hang loosely at his side. The orderly has to help him on with his jacket, and only once the sleeves have been pulled down over his lacerated wrists does Walsingham stride over and unlock the door.

“Same time tomorrow, Mr Lawrence.” Walsingham holds out a hand for Toby to shake, and its firmness is torment to Toby’s limp wrist.

Toby is determined to reach his room without help, and it takes everything he has not to steady himself against the wall as an orderly leads him briskly back along the corridor and down the stone steps. Once inside, the key turns in the lock, and he falls hungrily to the glass of water sat on his desk, refilling it twice more from the tap of the washbasin.

He sinks onto the bed and looks down at his hands. He supposes he ought to bathe his wrists. They quiver against his thighs, and he turns them over: two small circles, red and blistered from the tip of the electrodes, have bloomed in the centre of his palms. He feels sticky, soiled with sweat, but he isn’t permitted a bath until Thursday.

His body aches. His eyes droop closed, but the image of the man and the boy has been branded on the inside of the lids. His damaged hands curl into fists, and his chest tightens with the first, icy pulse of disgust.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Homosexual conversion therapy, including electrotherapy and nausea-inducing drugs, continued well into the 1970s, and continues on a psychiatric basis to this day. 1 in 10 health and social care staff (1 in 5 in London) have witnessed colleagues express the belief that sexual orientation can be 'cured' (Stonewall).


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

Toby has his first appointment with the psychiatrist the following morning. He is a short, rotund man, perhaps a decade older than Walsingham, with thick, round glasses to match his thick, round face. His tie is black with tiny yellow checks, and the effect puts Toby in mind of an overindulged bumblebee.

Toby is not an arrogant man, but he knows he is an intelligent one, and the slow, superior tone the psychiatrist takes with him, as though he has never once picked up a history book, is so infuriating that he wishes he had his postgraduate thesis to hand.

“Did you know that it has been only eighty years since the death penalty for homosexual activity was revoked in this country, Mr Lawrence?” the psychiatrist asks.

“What a charming piece of trivia.”

“Do you know how long homosexual activity has been a criminal offence in this country?”

“Since the Buggery Act of 1533,” Toby says in a bored voice. He wonders how long it had taken the psychiatrist to memorise these facts. “Previously all acts of sodomy had been dealt with by the ecclesiastical courts.”

“And are you aware of what the Church has to say on these matters, Mr Lawrence?”

Toby’s lip curls. He’d wondered how long it would take to reach religion. He endures a fifteen-minute homily on the Biblical views of buggery, neglecting to point out that Leviticus also forbids the wearing of clothing woven of two different fabrics, which somehow hasn't prevented the psychiatrist from wearing his abominable tie. The man’s entire line of argument is so unimaginative that Toby almost feels let down.

Tuesday and Wednesday pass sluggishly, interrupted only by meals and his visits to Walsingham. The treatment is discomforting, often painful, but not excruciating – he’s suffered far worse from his father – and Toby finds that, if he truly concentrates, he can relax his face enough to keep his eyes unfocused, so that the explicit images simply become smears of black on white.

The orderly appears to have passed on his invented dietary requirements, for Toby is no longer served meat, but he hardly touches his meals. He awakes in the nights with cramps and spasms in his arms and neck, and, as he cannot be left alone with a glass, is forced to suffer the indignity of angling his head under the tap of the washbasin in the darkness.

The treatment room is already scorching when Toby enters on Thursday afternoon. Walsingham doesn’t look up from the trolley, and the hairs on the back of Toby’s neck rise, inexplicably, to attention. He removes his jacket without being asked, and begins to roll up his sleeves.

“How are you finding everything, Mr Lawrence?” Walsingham asks, without looking at him. “I’m told you haven’t been eating.”

“It’s nothing histrionic. I just haven’t been sleeping-”

“At all?”

“Well, fitfully. I wake up with these tremors in my arms and neck-”

“Oh, that’s quite common. It should settle down once this stage of the treatment is complete.”

Toby attempts a placating smile. “I suppose I lose my appetite when I’m fatigued.” He starts towards the chair, but Walsingham holds up a hand.

“Your response to this method of treatment has been adequate, Mr Lawrence,” he says, “But I’m concerned that you may have become a little too comfortable. Too settled.”

Toby can feel an eyebrow arching of its own volition.

“We are halfway through your electrotherapy, Mr Lawrence, and I believe now is the appropriate time to commence a more intense attack on this disease.” He begins to pull on his gloves. “If you could please remove your trousers and underwear.”

“I beg your pardon?” He feels as though he is in some terrible West End farce.

Walsingham looks at him severely. “In our preliminary appointment, I informed you that electric current would be applied to the palms and, eventually, to the genitalia. If the body becomes adjusted to the therapy, the treatment becomes ineffective; therefore, in today’s session, and in our remaining sessions during this stage of the treatment, current will be applied to both your palms and to your genitalia.” The smile returns, but it is stiffer, less indulgent. “So if you could please remove your trousers and underwear.”

“And if I do not consent?” Toby sounds far braver than he feels.

“My dear Mr Lawrence, you _have_ consented. There is a Form of Consent in my office signed by your own hand.”

“Then perhaps I’ve changed my mind. I hardly think you can force me.”

Walsingham’s smile tightens. “If you refuse to cooperate, Mr Lawrence, then I will have no choice but to terminate the treatment. Patients complete the full course as prescribed by myself, or they are removed from the clinic. I do not operate an opt-in system.”

Toby longs to swing his jacket over his shoulder, like Mr O’Hara does on a warm day, fling the door open, and march out of the clinic with an expression of hauteur on his aristocratic face. Perhaps after pitching Walsingham’s battery down the stone steps.

“I would, of course, have to contact your family friend. To inform him of the termination, and to obtain payment of the cancellation fee.”

Toby wonders, later, whether if he had been in the room of his own volition, he might have instructed Walsingham on exactly where he could place his cancellation fee. With the now-familiar sensation of being trapped between a rock and a hard place, he reaches for his belt. Walsingham turns back to the battery. At the back of the room, the orderly rustles the slides.

Toby steps out of his trousers. He folds them tightly, but the thought of leaving them on the floor, as he might do in his bedroom, is somehow abhorrent, and he hooks them over his jacket. He takes a quick glance about the room, but no-one is paying him any attention; face flaming, he tugs down his underwear and thrusts it hurriedly into a jacket pocket. He smooths down his shirttails, and crosses the room with as much dignity as he can muster, crossing his legs to shield himself as he sits.

Walsingham studies his wristwatch. “We’re behind,” he says curtly.

The orderly scuttles over. The grooves in Toby’s wrists and elbows have begun to blister, and he winces as the leather straps are yanked tightly into place. When the orderly crouches to fasten his ankles, it takes Toby a moment to gather the nerve to uncross his legs; he attempts to lean back as far as possible, to put as much distance as he can between the orderly and his exposed groin.

Toby expects him to return to the projector, but Walsingham hands him three small circular pads: white, with thin white wires stretching back to the battery. With studied indifference, the orderly lifts the hem of Toby’s shirt, and presses one of the pads against his left testicle. His fingers are gloved and the touch is weak, clinical; Toby bites his tongue, repulsed. He shrinks back instinctively, but the straps pinch his damaged skin, and he holds himself rigidly as the orderly presses the second and third pads into place. He remains, to his immense relief, unstimulated, though his insides twist with humiliation.

There is a slight clink of metal against metal, as Walsingham lifts something else from the trolley and hands it to the orderly. Toby tries to remain staring straight ahead, but suddenly the orderly is standing directly in front of him, and a strip of leather is slipped between his teeth and fastened behind his head. The indignity of it, of being restrained and silenced as though he were incapable of controlling himself, as though he were an _animal_ , incenses him. He does not struggle, for he knows it is futile and he could not bear the mortification; but he sits poker-straight, hot and taut and defiant in his shame.

The battery hums into life, and the orderly turns out the light. A picture Toby has been shown before, of a single large hand encircling two penises, flickers onto the wall.

The pain is unlike anything Toby has ever felt. Worse than his father’s thrashings, worse even than when he fell on the frozen lake in his second year at Oxford and broke two ribs and a collarbone. It is as though molten wax is bubbling beneath his skin. The shock of it throws him backwards, and his head smacks against the solid wooden back of the chair; the noises wrenched from his throat are trapped by the leather in his mouth, as threads of scorching current unravel from the white pads to tangle and spark in his gut.

“Mr Lawrence,” Walsingham says crossly, and the current stops, “You must keep your eyes on the images. I do not want to have to remind you again.”

Toby wonders hazily whether he speaks to all of his patients like a schoolmaster. He is twitching from aftershocks, breathing hard through his nose, and he feels Walsingham’s eyes on him, hard and demanding; he raises his head, and it feels heavy on his neck.

The slide changes. A man of Toby’s age, slender and light-haired, lies face down as he is entered from behind. Toby, aghast, feels a twitch, and Walsingham must have seen it, for there is the flick of a switch and the assault begins again. Toby’s eyes water as he keeps them fixed on the photograph, biting down hard on the leather between his teeth. The shocks reach his navel, and tiny black spots erupt in front of his vision.

Walsingham does not stop for the customary two-minute break. He stands proprietorially by the battery, his eyes trained on Toby with a severe look of interest, moving only to adjust the voltage. On occasion, he calls out slide numbers to the orderly.

Toby is drenched in cold sweat. The leather is cutting into the corners of his mouth, and the tremors have begun to spread southwards, so that his thighs quiver against the seat of the chair. After fifteen minutes, Walsingham requests Slide 063, and Toby’s eyes fall shut as the horrifying image of the man and the boy looms large on the wall.

“Mr Lawrence,” Walsingham says. His voice is gentle now, almost coaxing, which somehow makes the situation even more unbearable; Toby feels a burning behind his eyes and at the back of his throat, and he is gripped with a fresh wave of terror.

“Toby,” Walsingham says. Toby’s shoulders begin to quake. He shakes his head feverishly, tugging at the straps holding him down, screwing up his face against the onslaught of emotion.

“You’re doing well, Toby.” Walsingham’s voice is firm, reassuring. “You’re halfway there for today. You must think how much happier you’ll be if you stick at it. You’re suffering now, but in the pursuit of a lifetime of peace.” Walsingham’s hand comes to rest, with scientific lightness, on one of his trembling shoulders. “You wish to be a proper man, don’t you, Toby?”

Toby makes a dreadful, pathetic sound.

“This affliction is not your fault, Toby, but the responsibility does lie with you to rid yourself of it. I’m here to help you; Wilson is here to help you. We wish to see you live a long, healthy life.” The grip on his shoulder tightens. “You did a brave thing coming here, Toby. Keep fighting this disease. Make your family proud. Be the son they deserve.”

And Toby makes the hateful, shameful noise again, because Walsingham suddenly seems to be so terribly, terribly right. Every nerve ending in his body feels as though it is on fire, but when he thinks of what he has done – vile, disgusting things, suddenly as unnatural and monstrous as some of those abominable photographs on the wall – there comes a savage kind of pleasure in the pain. God has tried him and he has failed, and now he must be punished. This discomfort would pale in the face of the fires of Hell.

He thinks of Freddie, tall and courageous and proud. Perfectly, exquisitely masculine.

His raises his face, wet with sweat and emotion. He fixes his gaze on Slide 063.

His eyes roll back in his head as Walsingham flicks the switch of the battery.

***

When the session ends, it is several minutes before his legs can support his weight, and two orderlies are required to help him re-dress. In his room, the tin bath is waiting, but the water cools before the spasms subside enough for him to strip back down to his underwear. An orderly hands him a sliver of soap, then retreats to stand silently in the corner of the room.

The next afternoon, when the orderly arrives to collect him, Toby sits hunched on the end of the bed, his breakfast and lunch untouched. The orderly asks, almost pleasantly, whether he wishes him to inform Dr Walsingham that the treatment is to be terminated.

At twenty past two, Toby briefly loses consciousness. Walsingham shocks him awake with the application of high voltage to his genitalia and palms simultaneously.

On Saturday afternoon, the orderly walks a step behind him, as though to be able to seize him if he attempts to flee. The blisters on his wrists weep against the straps, and the corners of his mouth sting as saliva leaks into the cuts. The orderly begins with Slide 063, and Walsingham, with the air of a man presented with his last meal, twists the dial of the battery.

“Very well done, Mr Lawrence,” he says sincerely, as the orderly unfastens the straps for the final time at twenty five to three, “I do believe we’ve made a little progress. I’ll be seeing you on Monday evening to commence the second stage of the treatment.”

Toby, by force of habit, awakes early on Sunday. He isn’t zealously religious, but he enjoys the weekly service, and wonders whether he’ll still be permitted to accompany his mother upon his return home, or whether he’ll be deemed too unclean.

There is a knock at the door at quarter past two, and for a terrible moment Toby panics that Sunday is not in fact a day of rest for the clinicians after all.

“Would you like to make a telephone call?” the orderly asks. Toby looks at him blankly. “All patients are permitted one telephone call on Sundays. Supervised,” he adds.

Toby follows him out of the door, but instead of being led up the stone steps to the clinicians’ corridor, he is taken past several doors identical to his own. At the end of the passage, a telephone is mounted on the wall. The orderly takes a cloth bag from his uniform pocket, extracts a sixpence, and pushes it into the slot. He thrusts the receiver at Toby, then takes several stiff steps back to obstruct the view of and path to the stairs.

“Hello, operator?” Toby says. His voice is hoarse with lack of use. “The Halcyon Hotel, if you please.”

As the operator makes the connection, Toby glances surreptitiously over his shoulder. The orderly is facing him, but with a glazed expression, and Toby decides to chance it.

“Good afternoon. Switchboard,” Peggy’s voice says, high and tinny through the receiver.

“I was hoping to speak with Mr Joshi,” Toby says, deepening his voice by several notes.

“I’m afraid Mr Joshi is on duty at the moment, sir.”

“It’s rather urgent, you see.” He crosses the fingers of his free hand in his trouser pocket. “I’m his landlord. There’s been a- leak.”

“Oh,” Peggy’s voice says. She sounds conflicted. “Well… I’ll put you through to the manager’s office, sir, and someone will be sent to fetch Mr Joshi.”

“I-” Toby starts, but the connection cuts out as the call is redirected. His hand twitches, and he is about to pull the receiver from his ear when the call reconnects with a click.

“Good afternoon,” Mr Garland’s voice says pleasantly, “I understand you wish to speak with Mr Joshi.”

Toby opens his mouth, but no sound is emitted.

“Unfortunately Mr Joshi is on duty for the rest of the day. I would ask Peggy to put you through to your mother’s suite, but she has not yet returned from her lunch engagement."

“How did you-” Toby blurts out, before he can stop himself.

“Would you like me to take a message for her?”

Toby slams the receiver down. The orderly exhales in quiet disapproval behind him. He supposes it had been a foolish enterprise: Garland would have known that Sunday was Toby’s rest day, would have assigned Adil extra duties, would have kept an ear out just in case.

“They weren’t in,” he says to the orderly, not turning round. “I don’t suppose I could try again later?” Adil doesn’t own a telephone, but Toby could speak to his landlady-

“No,” the orderly says shortly. “Patients are permitted one telephone call.”

He steps sideways pointedly, and Toby has no option but to follow him back along the passage.

***

Toby awakes on Monday with renewed determination. His loss of faith the previous week had merely been pain-induced, superficial; a momentary mental lapse in the face of physical strain. In their morning appointment, the psychiatrist turns to the topic of wives and children, and Toby attempts to count the number of checks in his hateful tie as the sermon on the virtues of the fairer sex washes over him. Women have never enticed him. He has great respect for them – Miss Edwards, the head statistician, is one of the cleverest people he has ever met – but he has no more desire to see underneath their clothing than he has to see underneath the psychiatrist’s.

He passes the day with reading, and at seven o’clock, Walsingham arrives in his room. He looks rather out of place in his white coat, like a housecat let loose in the wild. He gestures for the orderly to wait outside, then bestows upon Toby his stoat-like smile.

“I have with me a number of images, Mr Lawrence,” he says, with his usual forthrightness. “Some you may recognise; others not. In a moment, I shall leave you with them. Please look through them. You will most likely become aroused, and if so, you must feel no shame at indulging yourself.”

Heat rushes unbidden to Toby’s face, and for a moment he considers whether electrotherapy might have been the lesser of two evils.

“After thirty minutes, the orderly will enter and administer an injection-”

“Of what?”

“ – Which will induce nausea, and after approximately fifteen to thirty minutes, you will vomit. Within those fifteen to thirty minutes, as the nausea builds, you must return to the images. The objective is to train the mind to associate homosexual urges with an unpleasant physical sensation. Once the nausea has subsided, please return once again to the images. At roughly half past eight, the orderly will return, and the process will be repeated.”

Walsingham peers at him sternly. “During the first stage of treatment, Mr Lawrence, you had little choice but to engage with the photographic stimuli provided. Now, you must take on more responsibility for your cure. The longer you engage with the images – and arousal will be perfectly natural for you, so you must not feel ashamed – the greater the likelihood of the success of the treatment.”

He hands Toby a large brown file, and Toby takes it automatically.

“After the second bout of nausea, the orderly will bring you a glass of water before lights-out. I must warn you that any insolent or violent behaviour towards either the orderly or myself will not be tolerated. You may be restrained if deemed a threat.”

Toby wonders privately exactly what damage they feel he could do to Walsingham, who stands at over six foot, or to an orderly armed with needles, but he nods dumbly.

The door closes behind Walsingham, and the key scrapes in the lock. Toby sits down heavily on the end of the bed. Walsingham is correct, of course; the success of this stage of the treatment is partly in his own hands. He is unsupervised. He is under no obligation to look at the images at all. They are banking on his own desire to be cured.

Toby’s fingers curl around the edge of the file. He has spent the last eight days with nothing to do, alone, with the same books within the same four walls. He hasn’t once touched himself, even when his body ached for sensation; even in his adolescence, it had always seemed a shameful occupation, as unspeakable as relieving oneself. Adil had once asked him to touch himself in front of him, but Toby had become so flustered that he’d softened to the extent that Adil had had to add his own touch to the fray.

Toby slides off the bed to sit cross-legged on the floor. He places the file in front of him.

There are fistfuls of images. Grainy, almost candid photographs, perhaps of gentlemen with their rent boys; stiff, posed shots, with models lolling against papier-mâché Grecian columns; and even several drawings, sketched and roughly shaded. To Toby’s relief, Walsingham has not included Slide 063. He begins to rifle through the file, laying the pictures out in curves on the floor. Unlike in electrotherapy, the images are clearly intended to arouse him, and Toby isn’t quite sure how, but Walsingham appears to know exactly what he is partial to; already, dark heat is coiling in his stomach, as image after image of men kissing, men embracing, men connecting passionately, lovingly, spreads across the floor. A hand flutters to his groin almost of its own volition.

The next image is almost crudely innocent: a slender, delicate, yet undeniably masculine hand, resting atop another man’s knee. Toby inhales sharply. A memory of the train journey to Dartmoor flashes before him; of the final hour, when their compartment had been empty, and Adil had placed his hand firmly on Toby’s leg, a single finger trailing across the kneecap. Every slight press of his hand had sent shocks through him, and Toby had been gasping by the time they reached the station, finishing less than a minute after Adil pushed him up against the door of the rented cottage.

Clumsily, his hands hot and overeager, Toby grasps for his belt. The suppressed desire of the past week roars through him, and he pushes his trousers down to his thighs. His hand hesitates on his underwear, but the heat beneath throbs against his palm, and he slips trembling fingers inside with a groan. There is a flicker of guilt, but he does not even attempt to conjure an image of a woman as the psychiatrist has advised; Emma’s blonde hair flashes through his mind, but his nose wrinkles reflexively, and he thinks instead of the firm, warm pressure of Adil’s hand on his thigh, the lone finger dragging backwards and forwards like a promise. He shifts from his knees to lean back against the bed; he bends his legs, and his free hand comes to rest on his left knee.

He cannot let himself finish, because the orderly will see it, will _smell_ it when he enters the room, and Toby has no means of cleaning himself up. But five years of shared dormitories in public school have taught him how to do this silently, even as his mouth hangs open; his head drops back against the bed, his eyes screwed shut as his trembling hands move faster, press harder-

There is a rap on the door, and Toby jumps as though he has been electrocuted. He thrusts the photograph haphazardly into the pile.

“One moment,” he calls, his voice horribly strangled, and he scrabbles desperately for the fastenings of his trousers. He catches a finger on the post of his belt, but the key is scraping in the lock, and he has no time to reassemble the folder of images before an orderly who Toby has never seen before closes the door behind him.

He is a tall man, quite broad, wearing a white antiseptic gown and gloves. He spares barely a glance at the jigsaw of images scattered across the floor as he sets down a small box on the desk.

“Left arm, please,” he says briskly. Toby knows his face must be a dark, incriminating pink, and embarrassment muddles him as he tugs at the sleeve of his shirt without removing the cufflink.

Toby has no particular aversion to needles, and the prick is sharp but brief. Walsingham had said fifteen and thirty minutes, but Toby’s arousal is nevertheless dampened slightly by anti-climax as the orderly begins to pack up his box.

“You must return to the images,” he says, tucking the box under his arm. He looks deliberately down at the floor, before striding over to the door and locking it behind him.

Toby hovers for a moment. He has no great fear of vomit, having never been particularly adept at knowing his alcohol limits, and though he anticipates unpleasantness, it could hardly be as painful as electric shocks. However, the thought of simply sitting and waiting to be sick, with an orderly listening outside as though he is some kind of experiment, is quite mortifying, and Toby returns, almost defiantly, to the scattered images. He is an Oxford man, the youngest researcher the college had hired in thirty years; his brain is hardly malleable enough to be confounded by a set of poorly-taken photographs and a bout of nausea.

The heat returns, slowly, tugging at his chest and sending tiny pinpricks, like pins and needles, darting across his lower back. He skims over the more explicit of the images, searching for the image of the fingers curling over the kneecap.

His hand stutters to a halt. So far, the images have all been of white men – mostly handsome, slender, clearly wealthy – and Toby has thought little of it. This image, however, is of a tanned man. It is difficult to tell in black-and-white, but the man is almost certainly of Indian descent, his dark hair mussed as his lips stretch around another man. A white man.

And now nausea, tight and dense like cramp, is beginning to pull at the lining of his stomach. Arousal is still there, for Toby cannot help but remember the occasions when Adil has dropped to his knees, has pressed down on Toby’s hips as he leans over him on the bed; and Toby is fumbling for himself again, chasing the phantom sensation, even as the nausea pulls harder. In his haste, he knocks the picture aside slightly, and gasps at the one beneath: a white man, on his back, his hands held above his head by an Indian man, whose expression of seduction is so blank that the encounter must surely be staged.

There are at least five photos of interracial couples, and panic begins to quell Toby’s arousal. Surely this could be no coincidence. Walsingham must know about Adil, must have been told by Mr Garland over the telephone; and even though Garland wouldn’t have mentioned names, if Walsingham talks, or an orderly talks, if knowledge of the depths of his depravity somehow escapes these walls, then it wouldn’t be difficult to put two and two together. Adil is, after all, the only Indian man on the staff.

Nausea has him in its grip. His vision begins to swim as the medicine pulses through him, and he pushes the photographs away roughly. The room seems suddenly far, far too small, trapping him like a rat. Stale air rattles in his lungs, and he scrambles to take a hold of himself, but the thought of the nudges, of the whispers, of the veiled comments in the society section of the newspapers, as Adil stands in his hat and coat on the deck of an ocean liner-

With tremendous effort, Toby grips the edge of the bed and hauls himself to his feet. He cannot afford to lose his head now, not over something as trivial as a photograph. Walsingham will not talk. No-one will know. His mother had promised.

He staggers to his suitcase and fumbles blindly for a book to distract himself, the cramps in his stomach almost bending him double. He spots _Native Son_ , and the thought of touching something of Adil’s, something that has been handled and breathed upon by him, is as heartening as it is sentimental. He hasn’t read the novel – he’d intended to borrow it from Adil once he’d finished with it – and he is about to flick to the opening chapter when a slip of paper, neatly folded, slips out from beneath the front cover. Toby blinks at it stupidly, his eyes watering as another wave of nausea stings him.

_T,_

_This is to keep you occupied on those rainy Welsh afternoons. Rest, eat, and take care of yourself. Have a wonderful time. You deserve it._

_Yours,_

_A_

The cramps are spreading up from his gut to the hollow spaces between his ribs. Adil’s handwriting is economic, precise, and Toby can hear the words spoken in his soft, soothing voice as he reads them again. The ludicrousness of the entire business hits him once more, and if he had been a volatile man he might have hurled the book across the room. And Adil had meant it innocently, of course, but he is quite correct: Toby does deserve this. The entire fiasco is his doing, the result of _his_ carelessness.

And perhaps there might be something a little perverted about the business. Perhaps not the physical sensations – he knows much of that is biological, uncontrollable, whatever Walsingham says – but the _other_ feelings, the feelings of tenderness and affection, do in fact seem somehow unnatural. Sexual urges are base, perhaps, but they are undeniably masculine; yet the softer feelings, those which led Adil to write the fond little note, which led Toby to gift him the book in the first place, which led Toby to martyr himself in this absurd way, they are not male feelings. He cannot imagine Freddie ever writing such a note for Emma. Men are not soft. Men are not tender. Men do not touch themselves to the memory of another man’s hand on their knee.

His limbs feel heavy, sluggish. Nausea is burning him like acid, and he hardly has time to collapse to his knees in front of the toilet before he is vomiting, his entire body shuddering with the force of it; his very insides feel as though they are corroding, and though there is a buzzing in his ears, the words of Adil’s note ring in his head. Phantom touches are everywhere, against his knee, his shoulders, his groin, as he coughs and splutters and retches, the back of his throat scorched with bile. He’s never been this bad, not even the night after his father’s death when he finished almost an entire bottle of whiskey, and the sensation of being purged, of being somehow cleansed of his internal affliction, like a horse with colic, makes him feel as though he is vomiting poison.

He heaves drily for several minutes, throat catching and constricting, until the medicine is sated. He spits, and gropes for the lavatory chain without opening his eyes. He collapses back against the wall, and for long seconds does nothing but allow the icy stone to cool the back of his skull.

The taste in his mouth is rancid. The cuts at the corners of his mouth sting as though rubbed with salt. The pain of electrotherapy had been spiky, threading through him in gossamer strands, razor-sharp; but this pain had been blunt, bludgeoning his body, squeezing it until nothing remained to expunge.

He ought to return to the images. Walsingham told him he must. He parts his lips, to feel the cool air against his coated tongue. He imagines kissing Adil. He pictures his recoil.

He must return to the images.

* * *

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was barely two-thirds of the way through this chapter and the word-count was already at 10k, so I thought I'd better split it in two. Thank you to everyone who has stuck with this story - I know it's been rather a beast - and I promise that there is a happy ending for the boys just around the corner. The final (!) chapter should up within the next week.

* * *

The car is due at King’s Cross at one o’clock on Sunday afternoon. Toby awakes early, and his packing is slow, haphazard, for black spots erupt in front of his vision when he makes sudden movements. He does not pack his pyjamas, which are stained with vomit, instead leaving them screwed up in a ball beneath the bed. An orderly, nose wrinkling at the lingering stench, returns his shoelaces and shaving kit just before noon. Once Toby is quite sure he is fully packed, the orderly escorts him upstairs; the climb makes his head swim, and the knocks echo loudly in his ears as they arrive at Walsingham’s office.

“Take a seat, Mr Lawrence,” Walsingham says. The room is sweltering in the late May heat, and his upper lip glistens with perspiration in the light of the naked bulb. “I hope you have found your stay with us to be a valuable one. I was pleased to see that your psychiatric reports have improved dramatically over the past few days.” He smiles encouragingly. “We do find that the aversion stage of the therapy can be most effective in combatting the psychological symptoms.”

Toby licks his chapped lips. His tongue has been scorched raw by stomach acid.

“Your time with us has now drawn to a close, Mr Lawrence, but we are not quite out of the woods yet.” He pushes a small box across the desk. “In order to continue the treatment, you will be required to administer a daily injection – I suggest either first thing in the morning or late afternoon – and to take a tablet twice daily, with food. A syringe and needles have been provided; self-administration is perfectly safe. A variety of stimuli of a heterosexual nature are also included, to assist you in your transition.”

Toby pulls the box into his lap. The metal clasp is cold against his fingertips.

“You must make every effort to continue with the treatment independently, Mr Lawrence. In one month’s time, you will return to us, and myself and the psychiatrist will assess your progress. I hope we will be seeing some positive results; if not, we will discuss what action ought to be taken. It may be that you are required to spend a further fortnight with us.”

Walsingham hands him a yellow appointment slip and stands.

“You should be proud of yourself, Mr Lawrence. I know that this has been a trying experience for you but, if you just stick at it for a few more weeks, you will be happier than you knew was possible.” The smile becomes bracing. “By the end of the war we may even find you married with a son.”

Walsingham holds out his hand across the desk. Toby rises clumsily, almost dropping the box. They shake.

“All the best, Mr Lawrence. Until next month.”

***

The walk from the clinic back to King’s Cross should take only ten minutes, but Toby’s limbs are so leaden that it takes him over a quarter of an hour. Janice’s gaze had bored into the back of his head as he had crossed the dark foyer, chin raised, but now his suitcase is pulling at his shoulder, and his head is swimming, and his stomach throbs with emptiness. His brow beads with perspiration. The station, with its rows of windows set high in the walls, sweats like a greenhouse, and he leans heavily against the brick, his head drooping on his neck, his shoulders hunched inside his jacket despite the heat.

He peers through the arches at five-past one, and spies Meade lolling against the bonnet of the Rolls Royce, puffing on a roll-up. His wrists chafe against the cuffs of his shirt as he reaches down to retrieve his suitcase.

“Good afternoon, Meade,” he says, his voice rough and scratchy. Meade blinks at him through the sunshine.

“Afternoon, sir,” he says warily, as though half-convinced he might be an imposter. “Did you, er- did you have a pleasant trip?”

“Quite pleasant, thank you.”

“Lovely weather in Wales at the moment, according to the wireless.”

“Indeed.”

“I’m to take you straight home, sir, is that right?”

“Yes, Meade, thank you.”

Inside the car, Toby rests his forehead against the glass of the window. He supposes he ought to feel relieved at coming home, at having escaped the lines of airless, windowless rooms which had seemed to stretch, unending, like a rabbit warren; but he wonders whether he might not be exchanging one prison for another, albeit one with natural light.

The car pulls up smoothly before the front steps of the hotel, and Toby starts. His mother has assembled some bizarre form of hero’s welcome: almost the entire body of staff stretches in neat rows, with his mother, Freddie, Mr Garland and Emma looking down at the car from the top step. If Toby had had his wits about him, he might have smiled at the thought of a guest exiting via the front doors, and so throwing the entire picture into disarray; as it is, he can only blink dumbly at the ostentation. He hasn’t witnessed a reception like this since Freddie returned on leave after his first spell of active service. He feels a spark of angry panic: they had put it about that he was on holiday, and surely this peculiar assembly will cause someone to smell a rat. But his mother seemingly cannot resist showing him off, newly-minted, newly-masculinised.

Meade opens the car door and stands back smartly. The heat of the afternoon hits Toby and he shudders, feeling a little light-headed. He clambers awkwardly out of the car; he tries to smile at Meade, but the expression feels somehow grotesque on his face, and he turns instead to ascend the steps. There seem to be far more than he remembers. He can feel the eyes of the staff on him, flicking over him, _through_ him, and he has to thrust his hands into his trouser pockets to hide their trembling as he reminds himself that none of them could possibly know where he has been.

He has passed the maids and bell-boys; he’s approaching the senior members of staff. He chances a glance up, and his eyes skitter past Mrs Hobbs' expression of concern, Mr Feldman’s look of bemusement, and settle, for as long as he dares, on Adil. Something leaps in his chest, though he does not risk a smile, for everyone’s gaze is still on him; but then his chest leaps again, uncomfortably now, because Adil’s expression, usually so carefully blank, is appalled. It lasts only a moment, before he has schooled his face back to polite neutrality, but it shakes Toby enough that he almost trips up the next step.

“Mr Hamilton,” Mr Garland says, “Welcome back.”

“Darling,” his mother says, her expression strangely tight, and pulls him into a brief embrace, “You look exhausted. I hope Edward didn’t wear you out?”

Her ease with the charade prompts Toby to pull back. “Not at all,” he says, “I had a great deal of time to think things over.”

“Toby,” Freddie says jovially, as a muscle jumps in his mother’s cheek, “Smashing to have you back.” He holds out his hand, and Toby almost rolls his eyes at the absurdity of it; but he supposes that this is who he is now, and perhaps it is only pansies who embrace their brothers. He stretches out his arm, and the sleeves of his jacket and shirt ride up to expose a sliver of his damaged wrist. The swelling had subsided earlier in the week, but the blisters smart angrily when in contact with water, and the skin is tinged purple with bruising. Something twitches in Freddie’s face, and Toby feels a vicious surge of something like triumph as he shakes the outstretched hand.

“I didn’t expect to see you,” he says calmly. “AWOL?”

“Being a peer can have its uses.”

“I’m sure.”

The silence is arctic.

“Come along, boys,” Lady Hamilton says briskly, for Mrs Hobbs’ eyebrows are in danger of disappearing into her hair, “We’ll have tea in my suite.”

Entering the lobby, with its marble floor and high ceiling, sparks something in Toby akin to relief. There is safety here; there are no locked doors or electrodes or vile photographs. He can throw the box of medicine away, can set the booklet of lurid images alight, if he so desires. He is in control here. No-one will be allowed to touch him.

He wonders whether Mr Garland and Emma might follow them up, but to his relief they slip through the green baize door. The rest of the staff trickle through after them, and Toby cranes his neck to catch a glimpse of Adil, but the lift doors clang shut. They ascend in silence, his mother tapping a long fingernail against the gold handrail. Tea has already been laid when they enter, and Lady Hamilton waves the maid away.

“Don’t stand on the ceremony,” she says, gesturing for them both to sit. “I’ll pour.”

Toby forgoes sugar, and as he reaches out to take his cup, his cuffs ride up again.

“I’ll ask Emma to pop into the chemist’s tomorrow,” Freddie says, in what Toby supposes is intended to be a kindly tone, “She’ll know what might help.”

“An errand girl too now? There really is no end to her talents.”

Freddie’s expression darkens, and Toby takes a prim sip from his cup.

“Did you get any reading done whilst you were away?” his mother asks quickly.

“A fair bit. Thank you.”

“Did you rest? Did they feed you properly?” Her teaspoon clinks against the inside of her cup. “You look thinner.”

“I’m perfectly fine, thank you. I’m looking forward to getting back to the office.”

“Are you going back tomorrow?” Freddie asks.

“Codes won’t break themselves, unfortunately.”

“Mr Garland said you telephoned on Sunday,” Lady Hamilton says, with uncharacteristic abruptness. Toby now wishes the man was in fact with them so he could upend the pot of scalding hot tea on his head.

“He said you had a lunch engagement," he says slowly. "They wouldn’t let me call again.”

“Didn’t you have a telephone in your room?”

“It was a clinic of therapeutics, Freddie, not a holiday camp.”

Lady Hamilton’s teaspoon clanks against the saucer. Toby takes another sip from his cup, then strains for an expression of polite interest.

“How are things at the base?”

Freddie launches, a little coolly, into an account of his latest mission, and Toby allows his attention to wander as he stirs his tea listlessly. He asks after Emma, and Freddie informs him that she suffered minor burns to her legs from an incendiary bomb the previous week, whilst on volunteering duty. Toby feels a pang of genuine sympathy.

His mother makes to pour him another cup, but he shakes his head. His vision is beginning to swim again, and his joints throb with exhaustion.

“I’d like to lie down before dinner, if you don’t mind.”

“Don’t forget to take your tablet, darling,” Lady Hamilton says. He looks at her sharply.

“I have to take it with food,” he says, after a beat.

“Bring it down to dinner,” Freddie suggests casually.

Toby’s hands curl loosely into fists. Pain pulses behind his eyes, which ache with sleeplessness; he rises, clasping his hands behind his back, and the masochistic impulse he has been battling since he stepped into the suite is suddenly too compelling to resist.

“How much did you know?”

They blink at him, nonplussed. In the silence, he can hear the faint thrum of traffic through the open windows. Behind his back, he traces a finger over a blister on his wrist.

“What did Mr Garland tell you? About the nature of the treatment.” He presses the pad of his finger against the bubble of flesh. “Did you know what they were going to do?”

“I don’t understand.” His mother’s jaw has tightened. “It was a centre of therapeutics. Naturally I assumed the nature of the treatment was psychiatric.”

“Toby, what are you trying to say?” Freddie asks sharply.

Toby pushes against the blister, lightly, with the curve of his fingernail.

“I’m not trying to say anything,” he replies, after a moment. “I just wondered how you knew about the tablets. How- the extent to which Mr Garland has kept you informed.”

“Of course he’s kept us informed,” his mother says, attempting briskness, “And he says that Dr Walsingham is one of the best therapists in the country. So just keep on with the tablets, darling, and in a month’s time you’ll have forgotten you were ever ill at all.”

Toby doesn’t quite know how he reaches his suite. He is longing for a proper bath, a proper shave, the windows thrown open and the room shimmering with natural light.

“Hello,” Adil says, and Toby almost shouts aloud in shock. He freezes in the doorway.

“What are you doing?”

“Waiting for you.” Toby doesn’t move, and Adil’s smile falters slightly. “Well, come in, before someone sees.”

Toby hesitates, a peculiar fluttering in his chest, then steps fully into the room. He pushes the door closed and locks it quickly. His suitcase has been left beside his bed. Adil moves towards him, arms stretching out; Toby sidesteps him and strides towards it.

“Anything to report whilst I’ve been away?” He lifts the case onto the bed. His fingers fumble with the clasps. “My mother hasn’t found herself another suitor, has she?”

“Not that I’m aware of. How was-?”

“How are you? Ticking along?”

“I’m fine. I missed you.”

One of the clasps is jammed. “It was only two weeks,” Toby says, tugging at it. There is a short pause.

“Can I help?”

“No,” Toby snaps. “Open a window, would you? I’m all fingers and thumbs with you watching me.”

He wants to throw something when Adil immediately does as he is bid. He gives the case up as a bad job, and begins to peel off his jacket. Adil looks well: his uniform is neat, his hair slick and tidy, and he barely seems to be suffering in the summer heat.

“Won’t Mr Garland be wondering where you are?”

He knows he’s being hateful, even before Adil stills, his back to him.

“I’m not allowed on room service anymore,” he says, his tone neutral. “He wants me downstairs at all times.” He slides the window open with a rattle. “So he can keep an eye on me, I suppose.”

“Bit of a risk, then, isn’t it, coming up here, now?”

“I wanted to see you.” Adil turns to face him. “I missed you,” he says again. Calmly.

“I tried to telephone,” Toby says, and his anger spikes, hot beneath his skin like a fever. “On Sunday. Last Sunday. In the afternoon. They said you were on duty.”

Adil’s mouth opens a little in surprise.

“Didn’t they give you a message?” Toby demands, even though he knows they did not.

“No, I- but I thought you said we couldn’t risk the telephone? Or letters? If I’d known-”

“It doesn’t matter.” He reaches down to battle with the case again. “I only wanted to say hello. It wasn’t important. I was just bored,” he adds, spitefully.

Adil’s shoulders tense imperceptibly. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” he says carefully.

“You haven’t upset me.”

Toby’s hands shake as he wrenches the case open at last. Pain prickles in his temples, and he wants nothing more than to lie on the bed, his head in Adil’s lap, soft fingers combing through his hair and Adil’s voice, soothing and gentle, whispering to him that he isn’t diseased, he isn’t a sinner, he isn’t a dangerous, uncontrollable beast-

“What happened to your wrists?”

Toby looks up sharply. He had been throwing the contents of his case onto the bed, crumpled trousers and socks and battered books, and, in his temper, the cuffs of his shirt have ridden up again. His wrists look repulsive in the soft light of the suite, red grooves and purple stains on freckled white. He pulls the sleeves back down fiercely.

“Riding accident,” he says shortly. “Edward and I were fooling around on a hack and I fell. I’d wrapped the reins around my wrists. My own fault.”

“May I see?”

“I’m fine.”

Adil takes a step towards him, a frown creasing those lovely eyebrows. “Toby, you look as though you haven’t slept for two weeks. Have you been unwell?”

“No.”

“I’ve heard Wales can be very damp.”

“It wasn’t.”

They are almost nose to nose now, and Adil’s hands slip out to cup the back of Toby’s neck. Toby shivers, his flesh singing at the point of contact; and Adil leans in, slowly, and then their lips are pressed together, both sets chapped and peeling. The pressure is warm and firm, and Toby opens his mouth as thought it were the most natural thing in the world. His hands come to rest lightly on Adil’s hips, and the dark heat begins to coil in his stomach at the press of five splayed fingers between his shoulder blades. Some of the tension slips from his shoulders, and he leans forward hungrily, slanting his mouth, when the tip of Adil’s tongue flicks against his bottom lip. The phantom taste of vomit, hideously sour, strikes him like a blow, and he reels backwards, pushing Adil away jerkily as he raises the back of his hand to his mouth.

“Darling-”

“Don’t.” Toby swallows twice, convulsively. He scrubs at his damp forehead. “I’m sorry, I- I’m just very tired and hot and I need to have a bath before dinner, and if you’re caught here then we’ll both be for it." He takes a breath, blinking hard as the room threatens to slip sideways. "So perhaps you should go downstairs before you’re missed.”

Adil’s face hardens. “Why do I feel as though you’re about to tell me to call you ‘Mr Hamilton’?”

Toby flinches, stung. “Adil, for God’s sake-”

“Has someone said something to you? Freddie? Your mother?"

"No."

"Has someone upset you?”

“No!”

Adil gives a breathy, despairing little laugh. “Then why are you being so foul?”

Images, sharply-focused, flash through Toby’s mind: the obscene photographs, the crude drawings, Slide 063. The blistered red circles in the centre of his palms sting with sweat, and his throat burns as the voices of Walsingham and the psychiatrist roar in his ears.

_… reprogram the degenerated nerve endings…_

_You may be restrained if deemed a threat._

_You want to be a proper man, don’t you, Toby?_

“I am not foul,” he says, with such venom that Adil jolts, as though to take a step back.

“Toby, I didn’t-”

“I think it will be in both of our best interests if we keep our distance for a while.” Toby digs his thumbnail into a blister on his left palm, his shoulders tight and rigid. “It was foolish of me to think that everything might blow over in my absence.”

“Toby, don’t retreat from me. Not again.”

“Do not tell me what to do.”

They stare at each other for a moment; Adil still looks a little angry, and the expression seems entirely out of place on his mild features. Toby digs the thumbnail in harder as Adil crosses the room and unlocks the door, pulling it shut behind him.

There is a wet sensation on his palm, and he looks down to see that he has drawn blood. His skin crawls with sweat, and he lurches towards the bathroom, twisting the taps of the bath with his uninjured hand, then moving to the sink to rinse away the blood.

In the mirror above the sink, a grey-white face stares back at him. Shadowed eyes, sunken and hollow, blink beneath a greasy, overlong fringe. His skin is waxy, his cheekbones too prominent. His mother is quite correct, he _has_ lost weight, and he now realises why the staff were looking at him so peculiarly. Why Adil looked so appalled.

He grits his teeth in disgust. Foul is entirely the right word. The sickness within has begun to manifest itself without, and if he doesn’t take a grip of himself this moment then everyone will know, just from a glance, and not even Adil will want to touch him.

After his bath, he prepares the first injection, and supposes absently that the blister on his palm will most probably scar.

***

He swallows the first tablet defiantly at the dinner table that evening, but Mr Garland has apparently whispered something in his mother’s ear, for she puts her hand over his wine glass when he nods at the waiter for a refill.

“You mustn’t mix medicine and alcohol, darling,” she says, somehow managing to sound both reproving and indulgent, “Not if we want to feel its full effectiveness.”

Toby is tempted to point out that it will in fact be him, rather than the assembly as a collective, who will be experiencing this full effectiveness, but he still feels a little nauseous from the injection, and he pushes his plate away with a resigned smile.

“I think I’ll turn in, if you don’t mind.”

“It’s barely nine o’clock,” Freddie says.

“I’m tired. And I ought to prepare for tomorrow.”

“Toby,” his mother says, and he sinks awkwardly back into his chair. She pauses, making a show of straightening her desert spoon. “Your brother and I are here to support you. All we want is for you to get well.” Her fingers twitch, as though she were about to reach out to him but thought better of it. “You understand that, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“You’d better not come chasing after Emma,” Freddie says, though his smile looks rather like a grimace. “There’s already quite enough competition from that Yank.”

“You’re welcome to her,” Toby says, and it comes out far more bitterly than he had intended. He catches Freddie’s half-glance, and this time his mother does reach out.

“There will have to be one or two adjustments, now you’re back with us.” She pats his elbow stiffly. “Just until you’re well again and we can tr- we can be certain you’re fully cured. I’m afraid you won’t be permitted downstairs anymore, and I don’t wish to see you in the bar unsupervised. Do we have an understanding?”

“Mother, I’m not a cat in heat,” Toby hisses, scandalised. “I should think out of the three of us that I perhaps have the strongest track-record of self-control.”

“We shan’t be arguing about this, Toby,” Lady Hamilton says firmly. “If you wish for Mr Joshi to continue working here, then I’m afraid these conditions must be fulfilled.”

Toby has had a great deal of practice at exiting family gatherings in a cloud of controlled fury, but the haughty elegance with which he pushes back his chair and sweeps out of the dining room is, tonight, as much a signal of his resignation as his contempt. In his suite, he undresses hurriedly, tugging a pair of clean pyjamas from a drawer. He will not be able to sleep until he quells his anger, and so he scrambles onto the bed, sitting rigidly against the headboard. Drink is now, apparently, prohibited, and smoking is too static an occupation, so he has little choice but to take himself in hand, and the obscenity of it feels, perhaps churlishly, like an unseen explicit gesture to his mother.

He closes his eyes, and thinks back to the last time he and Adil were together, properly. His mother had been dining with Lady Ashworth and Freddie had been at base, so he had crept out to Adil’s flat and they had had hours, hot and sweaty and breathless, the volume of the wireless turned up until it crackled, and Toby’s palm presses down harder as he thinks of the lurid, throbbing marks Adil had left on his neck, marks barely covered by his shirt collar the next morning, marks which made him feel daringly, filthily owned.

There is a twitch. It is weak, almost token, and Toby presses his eyes shut tighter, presses down harder, muscles strung taut; the images are vivid, but though arousal flickers, nausea pulses stronger. Toby slips his hand inside his pyjamas, expecting heat, but the tugs on cool flesh are almost uncomfortable. His hand begins to move faster, in slight desperation, the friction making him wince, and the image of himself and Adil, joined together, suddenly merges into Slide 063.

Toby’s eyes fly open. His hand stills, and his throat and tongue and gums burn from the phantom sensation of vomit.

He settles quickly into his new routine after that. He takes a tablet with breakfast, and, by a feat of timing engineered impeccably by Mr Garland, somehow always finds himself leaving for the office before Adil has clocked in. He slips out to the gentlemen’s lavatory each lunch-hour to administer his injection, but it leaves him feeling so nauseous that he has to escape to the nearby public garden to walk it off. There are no windows in the office, and though it has rarely bothered him before, it now provokes a peculiar twisting sensation in his gut; and it is so terribly hot all the time, too hot to think straight, too hot to eat, and he stops lunching in the canteen with the other chaps in his department. He works late, often the last man in the office, and he isn’t always home in time for dinner. He’ll take his evening tablet savagely, and, when he isn’t too exhausted, bring out the discreet little booklet which had been included in the box of medicine.

The images are drearily predictable: busty women, partially-clothed women, women winking and pouting with bland smiles and glassy eyes. Mostly, the women are alone, but the final few pages of the booklet feature couples, and the men look nothing like Toby could ever hope to. Tall, broad, with muscles so large they could be cartoon GIs; standing over the women, or holding the women beneath them, their expressions perfectly controlled. Toby hardly twitches, even when, in his weakest moments, the figures transmute into tanned flesh and sinewy limbs and soft, slim-fingered hands.

“You look as though you need another holiday,” Miss Edwards remarks, as he sidles into the office with his shoulders hunched and his eyes downcast. He smiles back mechanically. He is overdue a haircut, but he feels somehow in limbo; the thought of making any form of change, even shopping for new clothes, seems a dark omen whilst he is still on probation from the clinic. He handles the nausea better now – he hasn’t vomited at work since the first week – but he has the discomfiting sensation of there being some form of dam between his brain and the rest of his body. He works more hours, but he’s achieving less, and codes are somehow taking longer to crack, results taking longer to transcribe; as though his synapses aren’t firing as quickly as they ought.

And he’s always so terribly tired. The tablets cause the most peculiar tingling sensations in his stomach, and he lies awake for hours, sweating as he breathes through the cramps. The lilting vibrations of Betsey and the band often drift up through the floor, and then he must be careful, because if he allows his eyes to fall closed to the sound then he dreams of Adil, and wakes up aching, and has to douse himself in icy water from the bathtub. By his second week back, his eyes ache so unbearably that on Wednesday afternoon he puts his head on the desk, just for five minutes, and when he opens them again it is ten past five and Miss Edwards is shaking him awake with a worried expression. He is more careful after that, making sure to doze only in the public gardens in his lunch-hour, and though Miss Edwards purses her lips at him each evening as she fixes her hat, she does not press him, even when he is typing so ferociously he hardly hears her call of goodnight.

By Friday evening of the second week, he is in dire need of a drink. The chaps in the office invite him for a pint, but Freddie has managed to snaffle an evening away from the base, and he supposes, rather reluctantly, that he ought to go home.

“Has Lord Hamilton arrived yet, Feldman?” Toby asks, once he has dragged himself up the front steps.

“He’s looking over the accounts with Miss Garland,” Feldman says, with a determinedly straight face. “He said he didn’t wish to be disturbed.”

“I daresay.”

Indignation flares hotly in Toby’s chest. It had been a bloody awful week, and he’d been kept awake until two o’clock in the morning because Betsey had elected to conclude her set with four brassy encores of _I’ve Got A Gal in Kalamazoo_. If Freddie thinks it appropriate to canoodle with Emma in the Assistant Manager’s office, then Toby cannot see how venturing downstairs in his own home could be considered a greater flout of decorum. He hitches his briefcase more securely onto his shoulder, and makes for the green baize door.

“I- sir-” Feldman says.

“Mathematics is my living, Feldman,” he says coolly, only half-turning around, “I hardly think he’ll object to my interruption.”

“Of course not, sir, I…” Feldman bites his lip, and the gesture looks absurd on a man so large. “It’s just we were- that is, the staff, sir- we were under the impression that you were, erm- that is to say, we were no longer to expect you downstairs. Sir.”

“This is my home, Mr Feldman.” Toby’s tone is dangerously honeyed. “If my brother is downstairs then I shall go downstairs to see him.”

“I’ll send someone to fetch him, sir,” Feldman says, a little desperately. He has abandoned his post and moved to stand between Toby and the green baize door. “It’ll be chaos down there now, sir; you’re better off up here.”

“Am I indeed? Forgive me, but it can hardly be chaos if Lord Hamilton is working on the accounts. And, if it is, I wouldn’t wish to interrupt the staff by asking them to take a message, when I am quite capable of speaking with him myself.”

Triumphant, he reaches out to push the door open, but Feldman’s arm snaps out to stretch across the doorway. Toby’s gaze becomes glacial.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

“Excuse me please, sir.”

Toby looks around so quickly that he almost cricks his neck. Adil is standing close behind him, balancing a silver tray laden with cocktail glasses.

“What in God’s name are you doing bringing those through here?” Feldman hisses, momentarily distracted.

“The door behind the bar keeps sticking; Tom’s having a look at it now.” Adil’s eyes flick over Toby, and Toby has the uncomfortable sensation of being catalogued. “Is there anything I can help you with, Mr Hamilton?”

“I was just telling Mr Hamilton that he needn’t bother going downstairs,” Feldman says, throwing Adil what was clearly intended to be a covert look. “Would you be able to take a message for him to Lord Hamilton?”

“Of course, sir,” Adil says, smiling politely at him, and it is the first time Toby has seen him in almost two weeks, since he arrived back from the clinic, and he feels a sudden compulsion to knock the tray out of his hands and drag him behind the reception desk-

“He’s in the Assistant Manager’s off-”

“For God’s sake, he doesn’t need to take a bloody message for me,” Toby snaps, cheeks flaring. “Haven’t we all got better things to be doing with our time than standing about here when by now I could have gone downstairs and seen Freddie without all of this-”

“Is there a problem?”

Mr Garland has appeared, apparently from nowhere, and is surveying the scene with characteristically deceptive mildness. Later, Toby is rather impressed with himself that he hadn’t hurled his briefcase at his head.

“Mr Hamilton is looking for Lord Hamilton,” Mr Feldman says quickly. “We were looking for a man to take a message to him.”

“I’ll do it myself,” Mr Garland says pleasantly, “I’m on my way to see him now.”

Three pairs of eyes suddenly swivel to Toby, and he falters; he can hardly announce he was looking for Adil. He thinks furiously, but his brain is slow and stupid with tiredness.

“I just wondered whether he wanted a drink,” he says eventually, lamely. His gaze flickers to Adil, but he looks away abruptly. The lines around Mr Garland’s mouth tighten.

“Lord Hamilton is very busy at the moment,” he says, in a kindly tone so reminiscent of Walsingham that Toby wants to hurl his briefcase again, “But I shall inform him of your return. Mr Joshi,” he says, suddenly sharp, “Haven’t you got duties to attend to?”

“Yes, Mr Garland,” Adil says, and Mr Feldman steps aside to allow him to pass through the green baize door. Faced with Feldman and Garland as a united barricade, Toby summons what remains of his dignity and stalks off in the direction of the lift. He is scolded by Lady Hamilton at dinner, and reminded of his promises by Freddie until he is practically grinding his teeth.

“It’s humiliating,” he mutters, stabbing angrily at his Eton Mess, “Credit me with a little self-control, Mother. I just wanted a bloody drink, for God’s sake.”

“Watch your language, Toby,” Lady Hamilton says severely, “And I will not continue to repeat myself. You may not drink until your course of medication is complete.”

“Why not set up some kind of alarm system?” Toby says sullenly. “The fire bell could ring whenever I set foot on the back stairs. Feldman could come running at me with buckets of sand.”

“Toby, do stop it.”

“Mr Garland blasting the water-hose-”

“Stop talking nonsense.”

“But what have you said to them?” he demands. “I go off on a two-week jaunt, and when I come back I’m suddenly barred from an entire floor of my own home.”

“Leave it, Toby,” Freddie says warningly.

“Well, if you want me to play along, I’d better have all the facts.”

“You’re behaving like a child.”

“Get the story straight, as it were-”

“I told you to leave it,” Freddie snaps. Toby might have been cowed, except Freddie’s face is pale and drawn with exhaustion, and there is a spark of satisfaction at having regained the slightest fraction of something like control.

“Mother?” Toby says pleasantly, though his hands are sweating beneath the table. Freddie looks at her beseechingly, but Lady Hamilton’s eyes are steely as she turns to Toby.

“Your brother had a meeting with the senior members of staff, and informed them that we have been concerned for your health. That with the death of your father, and the bombing of the hotel, and that dreadful espionage business, your nerves have been rather unsettled, and you’ve been drinking a little too much.” She dabs delicately at the corner of her mouth with her napkin. “And so on no account, for the good of your health, are they to permit you downstairs or in the bar unsupervised.”

Toby gapes at her, aghast. "You've told them I'm an alcoholic?"

"Not an alcoholic," she says patiently, "Just emotionally fragile-"

"I am not emotionally fragile!"

"- And so occasionally prone to drinking to excess."

“But the two weeks away,” he splutters, “That was, what? A retreat? Something to cleanse my soul of the call of-?”

“I didn’t specify,” Freddie interjects, “I simply said you had gone away to rest.”

“And I suppose everyone knows now, do they? The maids, the bell-boys, the barmen-”

“Of course not. The information was communicated in the strictest of confidence.”

Toby throws down his napkin. The dessert spoon clatters on the china, and several heads turn in their direction.

“I’m going up,” he says, pushing his chair back, “I need to take my tablet.”

***

Toby doesn’t notice that he is still losing weight until he’s required to punch another hole in his belt. He works later, rises earlier, and the booklet of titillating images becomes dog-eared with the number of nights he labours over it, before thrusting it, in frustration, out of sight. His wrists are healing well, but the marks on his palms have scarred, and the flesh at the centre is cracked and discoloured. He hasn’t seen Adil since the altercation in the lobby, and the separation, paired with his guilt at his rudeness, makes him snappish, to the extent that the maids keep their eyes down when they pass him in the corridors, and the bell-boys scatter like skittles when he hauls himself through the front doors.

On the Tuesday of the fourth week, with only five days until he is due back at the clinic, Toby awakes with the sensation of having been bludgeoned several times over the head. His left forearm itches like the devil, and when he pulls up the sleeve of his pyjamas, he sees that the flesh, pockmarked from the needle of the syringe, has broken out in heat bumps. He swings his legs out of bed and his vision lurches; there is a throbbing behind his eyes, as though his brain is pressing against the bones of his skull, and he is sick in the sink before he can take the toothbrush out of his mouth.

At twenty-past eight, he is only half-dressed. There is no time for breakfast, and he’ll be late if he doesn’t leave within the next five minutes. He abandons the idea of shaving – his hands are trembling too erratically to hold a razor – and he sits gingerly on the edge of the bed, tying his shoes by feel as he closes his eyes against the head-rush.

He is going to be horribly late. The weather is scalding, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue, and the sun beats down harshly on the top of his head. There isn’t a breath of breeze, and he feels another wave of nausea as the pain in his temple spikes.

“Are you quite well, sir?” Wilfred asks, doubtfully. Toby makes a non-committal gesture.

“If you could hail me a taxi,” he says, and presses the heel of his palm against his brow as he sways slightly on the steps.

“Would you like a lie-down, sir?”

“I’d like a taxi, please, Wilfred.”

He collapses into the chair behind his desk at ten-past nine, but fortunately Miss Edwards is in a meeting, and she doesn’t make her first round of numbers until just after ten o’clock. She looks up when she reaches the end of the first page, to ensure everyone is still with her, and her eyebrows furrow when she sees Toby slumped over his typewriter.

“For heaven’s sake, Mr Hamilton, what are you doing here in this state?”

“I’m fine.”

“And I’m the Governor of Southern Rhodesia.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you, Miss Edwards,” Thompson says from the desk in front of Toby’s, “You can be quite the battleaxe.”

Miss Edwards ignores him.

“Did you get squiffy last night, Hamilton?” Thompson continues. He grins, and rocks back in his chair so it knocks against Toby’s desk. “Hotel life, eh? Anyone got a snifter? Hamilton could use some hair of the dog.”

“There will be no spirits consumed in this office, Mr Thompson,” Miss Edwards says crossly, “And unless you wish to find yourself relocated to the typing pool, I suggest you return to your work.” She glares at him until he drops good-naturedly back onto all four chair legs, then looks back at Toby. “Are you sure you’re alright, Mr Hamilton?”

“Quite sure,” he says, “I’m just a little tired. And I did _not_ get squiffy last night.”

“Of course not,” she says kindly, and turns over her page of numbers.

“Of course not,” Thompson says to him, wiggling his eyebrows until Miss Edwards raps him sharply on the head with her clipboard.

“Half a crown says they’re stepping out within the week,” York says from the desk beside him.

Toby smiles weakly, but in truth he does not feel alright at all. In fact, as the morning progresses, he begins to feel rather a lot worse. The room is hotter than a greenhouse, but he shivers inside his jacket, sweat beading cold and damp on his face and neck. His empty stomach is roiling, and tiny tremors run from his wrists to the pads of his fingers and back again. His typing is torturously slow, and his fingertips leave damp smears on the pages as he pulls them from typewriter.

“You do look damn awful, Hamilton,” Thompson says just before lunch, watching Toby struggle to light a cigarette, “You haven’t caught one of those ghastly Welsh diseases, have you?”

“And what diseases might they be?” Jones demands. Thompson grins wickedly.

“I think you catch them from doing something unspeakable with sheep.”

Jones throws his inkpot at him, which misses and shatters on the corner of the desk, dousing Thompson’s briefcase in splatters of black. Thompson hurls his dictionary back, which Cunningham only just manages to deflect before it fractures Jones’ typewriter. The office descends into pandemonium, pencils and books and papers flying through the air; Toby’s copy of _Gwynne’s Grammar_ , which had been snatched off his desk by Thompson, soars in a graceful arc over their heads and into the overhead light. The bulb swings wildly, the lampshade knocked askew, and Thompson shouts with laughter.

Toby blinks. There is a buzzing in his ears, and the shouts and the crashes have begun to sound strangely muffled, as though he is hearing them from under water. He reaches for his glass of water, but his movements are clumsy, and instead he knocks it off the edge of the desk. Thompson cheers at the shatter, and hauls Toby up by his elbows.

“Look lively, Hamilton!” he yells, clapping him on the shoulder, but the sound is garbled in Toby’s ears. He feels as though he is peering through thick fog, his vision fractured and splintering as the room lurches.

“What on earth is going on?”

Toby turns his head towards the door, but his vision is now almost completely black.

“We were just, erm…” Cunningham’s voice is cut off by laughter.

“Just a little disagreement, Miss Edwards,” Thompson’s voice says, a little breathlessly. “About the Welsh.”

There is a snigger from someone. Toby feels as though he is drifting, sinking deeper and deeper into a warm bath as the static rises in his ears and the blackness grows denser.

“You aren’t at public school now,” Miss Edwards is saying furiously, “If the C.O. had walked in here just now instead of me then you’d be up for a court-martial, all five of you-”

Toby doesn’t remember falling; only opening his eyes to see five anxious faces looming over him.

“Told you he had a Welsh disease,” Thompson says, in hushed tones.

Toby says nothing. He becomes aware of a throbbing at the back of his head, and attempts, gingerly, to sit up.

“Don’t move!” Miss Edwards cries, lunging at him. “You may have cracked your skull.”

“We’d have heard it,” Jones says, but he sounds doubtful.

Cunningham slips a hand beneath his head and prods at him with gentle fingers.

“There’s no blood.”

“What happened?” Toby asks, rather stupidly.

“You just sort of keeled over,” Thompson says. “Your face had turned an awful grey colour, and suddenly your eyes rolled back in your head and you fell.”

“It was very graceful,” York adds, earnestly. “Like the Dying Swan.”

“Can you sit up, Mr Hamilton?” Miss Edwards asks.

Toby pushes himself up slowly on weak wrists, and winces as Cunningham parts his hair.

“He’s got a nasty bump,” he says, “Might have concussion. Better get him to a hospital.”

“Hark at Doctor.”

“I’m fine,” Toby says, but no-one appears to be listening to him.

“Ought we to call an ambulance?”

“I’ll fetch him some water.”

“Has he eaten anything today?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Toby says again, more firmly. He scrambles for his footing, and Thompson leans down to help him stand. “I just need to sit down for a moment. I’ll be perfectly alright after lunch.”

“Mr Hamilton, you are going to a hospital-”

“I am not going to a hospital.”

Miss Edwards purses her lips. “Very well. Then you are going home. York will call a taxi.”

“I don’t need-”

“Hospital or home, Mr Hamilton: the choice is yours.”

Toby hasn’t the strength to scowl, let alone argue. Thompson deposits him behind his desk, where he sits dumbly as Jones packs his briefcase.

“Fireman’s lift, do you think?” Cunningham asks, grinning.

“Yes, that’s just what he needs, Cunningham. To be suspended upside down with your arse in his face.”

“Mr Thompson, kindly make yourself useful and inform the C.O.”

In the end, Cunningham slings one of Toby’s arms over his broad shoulders and helps him downstairs, where York is waiting with a taxi.

“Get well, Hamilton!” he calls, throwing Toby’s bag inside after him and closing the door.

The midday heat is paralysing, and the taxi crawls in the lunchtime traffic. Toby winds down the window as far as it will go, and when the driver asks where he’s headed, it takes several seconds for the question to register. He concentrates on steady breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth, fingers tapping frantically on his knee.

Wilfred’s eyebrows knit together when he stumbles out of the taxi door.

“Mr Hamilton, sir,” he says, starting forwards as though to catch him if he falls, “Are you quite well?”

“Just a little under the weather, Wilfred,” Toby says, summoning every ounce of strength he has left to smile reassuringly. “I thought I’d better come home and have a lie down.”

“Shall I telephone Lady Hamilton, sir?”

“Is she out?”

“Yes, sir. She and Mr Garland are at a conference in Blackfriars. Just for the afternoon.”

“I see.”

Freddie is at base, which leaves only-

“I suppose Miss Garland is overseeing things?”

“She’s on her lunchbreak at the moment, sir, but I can send someone to fetch her?”

“No,” Toby says quickly, “No, thank you, Wilfred; that won’t be necessary. I’ll just slip upstairs for a rest. I’d really rather not be disturbed.”

“Of course, sir.”

Toby pauses on the top step. “What I mean is- you might keep it to yourself. That I’m here. Not at the office.” He smiles reassuringly again. “I don’t want a fuss, you see.”

“Right you are, sir,” Wilfred says, and taps his nose. Toby waits until he has turned away, returning to the front gates, before stepping cautiously through the front doors. Mr Feldman is nowhere to be seen, presumably also taking his lunchbreak; in fact, the lobby is entirely deserted aside from the junior receptionist, who is so engrossed in a library copy of _Great Expectations_ that he barely spares Toby a glance.

Toby’s heart hammers in his chest. He crosses the parquet flooring as quietly as he can, expecting with every step to hear an accusatory voice behind him. But it does not come, and now he has reached the doorway of the bar, and he can hardly dare to hope until he sees the back of a dark head of hair. He is arranging glasses on the shelves, his hands light and quick, and he does not turn around until Toby is within arms’ length of the bar.

“Toby,” he says, startled, then, glancing around as though it might be some form of trick, “How can I help you, Mr Hamilton, sir?”

“Don’t start all that.” Toby says. He leans heavily against the bar, the bright light of the chandelier stinging his eyes.

“Toby, are you alright?”

“I do wish people would stop asking me that.”

“Toby, you can’t be here.” Adil still holds a champagne flute in each hand. “If Emma comes in-”

“She’s on her lunch break.” Toby drops his forehead onto the cool surface of the bar to steady himself. “Come upstairs.”

“Sorry?”

“I know I’ve been an arse, Adil, but for God’s sake, please come upstairs.” He looks up, his eyes pleading. “This might be our only chance.”

“Our only chance for what?”

Toby’s head is swimming again, and his grip tightens on the edge of the bar.

“We can’t talk here,” he says, “Upstairs. Please. Please, just come.”

“I can’t.” Adil’s expression is agonised. “Toby, I’ll be missed.”

“Tom can cover for you.”

“He isn’t in until this evening.”

Toby, to his horror, feels his face begin to crumple. A hand flies up to cover his eyes, and he emits a horrid, choked sound.

“Please, Adil. Please, please, please, I can’t- I can’t do this on my own anymore.”

There is the clink of glass, and then firm, long-fingered hands are on his shoulders, and Toby’s throat aches with the effort of swallowing the lump which has risen there.

“Toby, tell me what’s going on.”

“Not here,” he says. He pulls back, swiping fiercely at his eyes. “Please. I wouldn’t ask- you know I wouldn’t- not if I didn’t have to-”

“Alright,” Adil says, and he looks wary, even a little frightened. “I’ll meet you up there.”

* * *

 


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

When he reaches his suite, Toby retches into the toilet for several minutes, though he has nothing to bring up besides foul-tasting stomach acid. When he staggers out of the bathroom, Adil has already let himself in.

“Should I telephone for a doctor?” he asks, looking rather alarmed.

“No.” Toby pulls himself clumsily out of his suit jacket; his shirt, drenched in cold sweat, is sticking to his chest. “No, you mustn’t. Lock the door.”

“I have.”

Quick, gentle fingers are at his neck, unknotting his tie.

“How did you get away?”

“I said I was feeling faint and needed a walk. Seamus is on duty until I get back.”

Toby nods. His throat is horribly dry.

“Toby, you’re shaking.” Adil’s hands curl around his shoulders. “What’s going on?”

“I…”

Toby’s throat has closed up. He opens and closes his mouth several times, but he cannot seem to shape the words; now he finally has Adil with him, he is at a loss of where to begin. Adil takes a slightly firmer grip of his shoulders, as though afraid he might bolt.

“Toby,” he says, in the soft, soothing voice which has haunted Toby’s thoughts for the past six weeks, “The door is locked. We’re safe in here. You can tell me anything.”

“You’ll hate me.”

Adil’s eyebrows jump a little in surprise, and though the words had slipped out, unbidden, Toby is struck by the truth of them. Adil would be disappointed, perhaps even appalled; Adil, who has always been so certain, has never wavered, never fled from the knowledge of who he is even in the direst of straits, who has a courage and a pride-

“Of course I won’t.”

“You’ll be disgusted.”

“Now you’re frightening me.”

The hands slide down Toby’s arms, and take the steadying, longed-for grip of his elbows.

“Has something happened at work? Has someone found out?”

Toby shakes his head. He pulls back, and Adil’s grip tightens for a moment before he lets him slip out of the embrace. Crossing the room to where he dropped it by the door, Toby fumbles in his trouser pocket for the key to his briefcase. He unlocks it, and pulls out the box of medication. With a peculiar, misplaced sense of déjà-vu, almost as though he is watching himself, he moves back to Adil and pushes the box into his hands, before sitting down rigidly on the edge of the bed. He stares at a coffee stain on the carpet.

“Where did you get this?”

Adil’s voice is quiet, carefully neutral; the voice he might use with a volatile aristocrat.

“A clinic.”

“You didn’t send off for it?”

Toby looks up at him. “No.”

A taut silence. The maids have left his windows open, and the curtains whisper softly in the draught. Toby looks back at the carpet.

“You didn’t go to Wales.”

He swallows. “No.”

There is the rustle of paper, and Toby presumes he is flicking through the booklet of images.

“Well, these are rather nauseating.”

Something snaps in Toby’s chest. He leaps to his feet.

“If you’re just going to make a joke of it-”

Adil holds the booklet up quickly in surrender, says something placating, but rage has broken through the fog, and Toby feels his face flare hot with fury.

“I suppose it is rather funny, isn’t it. Silly Toby, can’t even manage a month’s worth of tablets without keeling over.”

“Have you collapsed? Is that why you’re home?”

“It doesn’t _matter_.”

Adil drops the box and the booklet onto the bed, and takes one of Toby’s hands urgently between both of his own.

“Talk to me. Tell me what’s been going on.”

“I’m fine,” Toby says automatically.

“Toby, I’ve seen healthier-looking corpses.” He rubs a finger over Toby’s frail wrist. “You look as though one puff of wind would blow you away.”

Toby snatches his hand back. “If you’re just going to be unpleasant then you can go back to your bloody bar.”

“I wasn’t- just tell me what the matter is.”

“I’m not weak!”

Adil blinks. “I never said you were.”

“No, but you’re thinking it. You and Mother and Freddie and Mr Garland and Emma and Mr Feldman and Miss Edwards and the chaps at work-”

“We don’t think anything of the kind.”

“Stop lying to me!”

Toby’s voice cracks, and he knows he is speaking louder than is wise, but something in his chest has shattered, and he isn’t sure he could stop now even if the air raid sirens begin to blare.

“I know that when you look at me, all of you, you see something- something shrivelled. Half-formed. Not-quite a man.”

“Toby-”

“Because I’m thin and spindly and I can’t find clothes which fit properly, and I never got my colours for rugger, and I fly into a panic about so many tiny, stupid things-”

“That’s hardly your-”

“And I don’t fight back. I let people walk all over me, I- I just stand there and take it. My father and Mr D’Aberville and now Mr Garland and- I suppose it was inevitable really, couldn’t have come as any great surprise, only the usual disappointment-”

“Please.”

“That I’ve turned out to be a filthy little queer-”

“Don’t you dare use that word.”

Adil seizes his arms roughly, and for a moment Toby thinks he might strike him. He gives a short, hysterical laugh.

“It’s all so _predictable_. So dully tragic- or tragically dull? You know, I can’t even get it up to a _picture_ of a woman?”

“Who’s said this to you? Is this coming from Freddie?”

“Am I incapable of having independent thoughts?”

“Everything was fine, better than fine, before we were found out-”

“And whose fault was that? I’m so useless I can’t even remember to lock a bloody door.”

Adil gives him a short, jerky shake. “What has happened to you, Toby? And for God’s sake, don’t tell me you’re fine,” he adds, when Toby opens his mouth. “Tell me what has happened. Tell me where that box is from.”

“I can’t.”

Adil inhales deeply, as though praying for patience.

“Toby, I can’t stay up here much longer. Seamus clocks off in twenty minutes. I am so, so in love with you, my darling, and I will do anything, anything at all, to help you, but you need to let me in. Whatever it is, I won’t hate you, and I won’t be disgusted. I promise.”

There is silence for a moment; then Toby extracts himself from Adil’s grip once more, and sinks back down onto the edge of the bed. He lets his head fall into his hands. Then there are hands on his knee, and through the gaps in his fingers he sees that Adil has knelt beside him. There are footsteps in the corridor, but they pass the door without pausing. Toby waits, for long seconds, but the footsteps do not retrace themselves, and silence swallows them again except for the faint drone of traffic in the afternoon heat.

“I didn’t go to Wales,” he says quietly.

“No.”

“Did you ever think I had?”

“Until the afternoon you came back. You looked ill. You had this terrible, hollow look in your eyes when you got out of the car.”

The back of a hand is traced across Toby’s cheek. He closes his eyes.

“Before I say anything, you must promise me you won’t fly off the handle.”

“Of course.”

“I don’t just mean at me.”

“I promise.”

Toby catches the hand on his face and presses his lips to it quickly.

“Come and sit up here,” he says, “Else you’ll get cramp.”

He waits for Adil to settle, then shuffles away, tapping a nervous finger against his ring.

“Alright. Well, the night we were caught, I had to go and see my mother. Freddie was there, and Mr Garland and Emma. Mother tried to dismiss Emma, accused her of lying, but I wouldn’t let her. It wouldn’t have been right, you see, because she hadn’t telephoned the police even though she’d have been within her rights too. And everyone argued for a while, and eventually it came out that it hadn’t been a one-off; that it wasn’t just a lapse of judgement, but that it- _we_ were long-term. So Mother got rid of the Garlands, and there was rather a lot more arguing, and all sorts of accusations were thrown about, but- well, after I made it clear that we were, you know, _in love_ and all that, she really did get frightened. And- well, she said it’s an illness. A kind of cancer.”

He daren’t look at Adil, and instead focuses hard on the coffee stain.

“She and Freddie started talking about clinics and doctors, and I said they couldn’t force me because I wasn’t a child and I wasn’t mad. But then they said they were going to let you go, and I knew if they did that you wouldn’t get another job in London – Mother and Mr Garland would have made sure of it – and then you would have to move away, find a job somewhere else, and you wouldn’t know anyone and you’d have to leave your family and the city you grew up in and- well, you’d have to leave me. And if you didn’t move away, they’d deport you. For being unemployed. Your papers would be revoked; it happens all the time, I’ve read about it in the papers. Unless you enlisted, of course, but that would be so, so much worse, and I- I just couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear the thought of you being cast out because of me, because I was so careless. So I said that if they let you stay, and if they didn’t make life difficult for you, and if they promised to be decent and civil, that I’d go to their clinic. Without any fuss or- or scenes.”

“Toby,” Adil says faintly.

“Mr Garland found it,” Toby says, rushing on, for he knows that if he stops now he may not regain the nerve to continue, “The clinic. And I’m not quite sure- well, there appears to have been some confusion. Everyone kept talking about therapeutics, and so I don’t think they quite knew what exactly was going to happen; certainly Mother and Freddie seemed to think it was some kind of psychiatric retreat.”

“And was it?”

“Not exactly. It _was_ a centre of therapeutics, but the therapy wasn’t solely psychiatric.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Adil’s gaze flicker to the box of medication.

“It was in three stages, you see, and I had a psychiatry appointment every other day, when they just spoke a lot of nonsense about God and the law and wives and children. That wasn’t so bad. But, erm… Well, you see, there were other things as well.”

“What sort of things?” Adil asks, after a pause. Toby swallows shakily.

“Well, the first stage- the first stage was something called, erm- e-electrotherapy.”

Adil inhales sharply.

“They, erm… I had to sit in a chair and they had a projector and they put images up on the wall, and then they had two little electrodes which they’d hold against each palm. The idea was – this is how he put it, the doctor – to ‘reprogram the degenerated nerve endings’. Because the images were p-pornographic, you see, and all of men… And that lasted for a week, and later on, later on, they, erm, they did it to my- to my-”

He looks at Adil, a little desperately, and his eyes flick downwards pointedly. Adil’s face contorts.

“But that was only later on in the week. It wasn’t every time. Just towards the end.”

Adil reaches out, and turns Toby’s hands over gently, so that they rest, palm-up, on his thighs.

“Do they hurt?” he asks softly, looking down at the angry red circles.

“Not really.”

Adil strokes his thumbs over the healing wrists.

“And here?”

“They restrained me,” Toby says, and cringes immediately at the word. “Just policy; it wasn’t personal. And they let me keep my socks on, so my ankles are fine. It’s my own fault, really,” he says, and he tries to smile. “I should have kept still.”

Adil’s hands tighten. “You were being electrocuted, Toby.”

“Well, anyway, that was the first week,” Toby says, ducking his head, “And the clinicians take Sundays off, which was when I tried to telephone, but of course Mr Garland wouldn’t put me through. And then in the second week I was given these injections. It started as two a night, but it built up to, erm- up to four by the end of the week.”

“What sort of injections?”

They were holding hands properly now, Adil running reassuring thumbs over his knuckles.

“I don’t know exactly what they were, but they made me sick. And I had a folder of images to look at, and I was supposed to look at the images before the injections, so that I’d be e-excited, erm, and then I had the injection, and then I had to go back to the images, and I’d feel sicker and sicker until I vomited. The idea was to train the body to associate homosexual thoughts and urges with nausea; he called it aversion therapy. And then I’d get another injection and it would happen again, but I wasn’t really eating very much, you see, so by the fourth injection there wasn’t anything left to bring up. The doctor only let me have three on the final night, because I’d been coughing up blood.”

Toby’s hands are sweating, but Adil has them in a vice-like grip. He swallows the impulse to pull away, to wrap his arms protectively around himself.

“And then I was discharged- obviously. The box is the final stage of the treatment: I’m supposed to take two tablets a day, and an injection, and the booklet is to teach me to respond to the right kind of stimuli. I have to go back on Sunday, and they’ll assess my progress, and decide whether I’m cured, o-or whether I need further treatment.”

The thumbs have stilled. Toby risks a glance upwards, and his clammy hands turn cold at the set of Adil’s face, which is perfectly, flawlessly blank. Toby pulls his hands back, and Adil lets them slip away, his gaze fixed at a point slightly to the left of Toby’s head.

Toby stands. Something hot and violent explodes in his chest, as though razor-sharp talons are curled around his heart. His arms snake around his middle and he rubs at them feverishly, feeling impossibly, incurably dirty, as though the medicine, which he had thought was his deliverance, is gnawing beneath his flesh like a parasite.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and now his nails are scraping at the fabric of his shirt, “It was four against one and I- I just couldn’t lose you, I couldn’t let them ruin you. And they would have, you know, they wouldn’t have thought twice about it.”

His control is slipping away, breath coming in short, quick gasps, and his nails dig in deeper as he feels wetness gathering in his eyes, and his head is splitting with how little sense it all makes, because he is crying over losing the love of a man for whom he has been tortured to feel nothing at all.

“I don’t know how to make it better,” he says. He knows he must look pathetic, and it can hardly be helping his cause, this undignified sobbing, which no proper man would ever succumb to, and which surely makes him a walking, breathing example of every shameful quality which the psychiatrist had said that men like him possess.

“I know that this makes things different- that now I’m dirty a-and disgusting-”

Adil crosses the room and pulls Toby against him, tightly, as though attempting to meld their bodies into one. Toby stands rigidly for a moment, but when the arms around him seem to intend him no harm, he clasps his hands around Adil’s waist and drops his forehead against his neck. There is a hand against his hair, clutching, almost pulling, and Toby doesn’t think they’ve held each other so tightly since their terrible, desperate embrace on the staircase outside Adil’s flat, the night they almost lost each other.

“I love you,” Adil is saying, “I love you so very much.”

He does not know how Adil can bear to touch him, when he can hardly stand to be inside his own skin, and he presses even closer, as though the touch of Adil’s unsullied flesh may somehow cleanse him. They stand quietly, until the shaking in Toby’s shoulders subsides, and the room is still except for the flutter of the curtains and the rise and fall of their chests.

“We need to get you to a doctor.”

Adil’s voice is soft, his breath warm on Toby’s earlobe.

“That medication may not be safe. It could have anything in it.”

The tight press of their bodies has become uncomfortable.

“Toby?”

“I can’t go to a doctor, Adil, because they’ll know. When I show them what I’ve taken, they’ll know, and once they have my name they may go to the press.”

“We could make something up,” Adil says, though he sounds unconvinced. He pulls back, and rests his hands on Toby’s face. “You’ve lost such a lot of weight.”

Toby gazes dully at the wet stain he has left on the shoulder of Adil’s white jacket.

“The worst of it is that I think there were moments when I wanted it to work. Not just when I was being sick, or looking at those awful images- but lying there, in that horrid room, thinking it all through… well, I couldn’t stop wondering what will happen if Freddie gets hit, if we lose him, which is such a real possibility, and how that will change everything. I’d have to marry, I’d have to have an heir- and I thought how much easier it all would be if I _did_ come out changed. Cured. If the worst should happen, then for the first time in my inane, sub-par existence, I’d be able to fulfil someone’s expectations.”

“I hate it when you talk like this.” Adil’s fingers trace across Toby’s lips in agitation, as though to spell them shut. “I hate how much you believe it.”

“Adil, I got us caught. I left the door unlocked. What has happened to me is my fault.”

“It isn’t; of course it isn’t.”

“How could I let you be driven out because of my carelessness?”

“So this is what, a punishment? Self-flagellation?”

“Of course not, I- look, Adil, you weren’t in that room, you weren’t there when they were talking about cancer and men in saunas and people forcing themselves on people and- and they were going to _sack_ you, Adil, you would have been deported!”

“But what they _did_ to you-”

“Can you stand there and tell me you wouldn’t have done the same? If the positions had been reversed, you wouldn’t have made the same choice?”

Adil exhales in frustration. “Alright, of course, of course I would have, but-”

“Don’t say you would have come to me, told me the truth, because you wouldn’t have- because you would’ve known that I’d have stopped you, just as I knew you would’ve tried to stop me. You did something foolish and noble for me once,” he says, and his gaze is fierce as their eyes lock. “This time, I did something foolish and noble for you.”

“And that’s what love is?”

“So it would seem. For us, at any rate.”

He looks down at the box, lying, innocuous, on the bed.

“There is a sickness within us, Adil. I felt I had made my peace with it, before all of this, but the sheer number of people who say it is wrong-”

“They are the ones in the wrong, not us,” Adil says, almost savagely.

“All of them? And all of the books, and the laws, and the Word of God-?”

“Toby, it was you who told me how we’ve been- what was it? It made my head spin just to hear you say it. Yes- you said we’ve been coerced, socialised into monogamous heterosexuality because of its benefits to capitalism. Even thirty years ago, society would have collapsed without heirs and marriages and the alliances that come with them; certainly amongst your class of people.” He smiles, a little hopelessly. “It’s all about money, Toby. That is all it is. And the world will be a different place after the war-”

“The books won’t be rewritten. The Word of God won’t change. People will always want money.”

The skin on Toby’s forearm prickles, and he drags his fingernails across it restlessly.

“We make each other happy,” he says, digging the nails in harder, raising angry red lines, “And we aren’t hurting anyone. But we are breaking the law. We’d get longer in prison for what we’ve done in this room than for rape.”

Adil closes a hand over his wrist, tugging his nails away.

“I can’t imagine what it was like,” he says, “How much pain you must have been in. Your mother-”

“She didn’t know,” Toby says, suddenly weary. “If she had, she wouldn’t have sent me there. She isn’t my father,” he continues, at Adil’s soft snort, “She isn’t cruel.”

“Just afraid. Afraid and ignorant.”

Toby’s fingers have fluttered to his ring. The metal is warm from the heat of his flesh.

“It’s done something to me: the treatment, the- the medication. I’m frightened that it’s damaged me. I can’t sleep, I can’t think- everything just seems to take a little longer. I get these twitches and these spasms, without warning, all over my body. And I can’t-”

He breaks off, grip tightening over the ring.

“I can’t get aroused, Adil. I’ve tried, with that bloody awful book they gave me, but it doesn’t work. Even when I’ve thought about you, or- or men in general, I _can’t_. Nothing happens other than nausea, or-or my hands will start to shake, and sometimes – once or twice – I’ve woken up with… I’d dreamt about you, _us_ , and- well, it hurt. It hurt so much I couldn’t touch it. It felt as though the skin was being pierced by hundreds of needles.”

Adil’s touch is tender at his elbows.

“Toby, you’ve been under tremendous strain. You say you haven’t been sleeping, and I know you haven’t been eating, and whatever’s in that medication cannot be good for you. Your body is burnt out. It’s exhausted. It just needs time to recover.”

Toby swallows thickly. “We can still be together,” he says, “Like that, I mean, I can still- to you, I mean. Unless you’d rather not, now, which I do understand-”

“Toby, there is nothing about you which disgusts me.”

As if to prove his point, he lowers his mouth to Toby’s forearm and kisses it reverently.

Toby’s head droops forwards onto Adil’s shoulder. The sun drops lower, and fragments of dust are shimmering in the shaft of light which has broken through the gap in the curtains. Between his shoulder blades, Toby can feel Adil tracing a continuous figure of eight, his touch rhythmic, feather-light.

In the corridor, the grandfather clock strikes three o’clock.

“I don’t want to leave you,” Adil says, when the final chime has melted away.

“They’ll be sending out a search party soon.”

“I’ll say I fainted on my walk. Will you be alright?”

Toby lifts his head, stretching out his neck. He tries to smiles.

“I’ll manage. I’ll take a bath and try to sleep until dinner.”

“Will you go on with the tablets?”

“I’m frightened not to. I haven’t the first idea what this assessment on Sunday entails; they might test my blood, or my urine, and if there aren’t traces of the medication then that might be grounds enough to readmit me.”

“They can’t force you back; not without your consent.”

“I signed a form, Adil. And even without it, I’d be caught again: if they decide to readmit me and I refuse, they’ll tell Mr Garland, and then you’ll be dismissed, and the entire enterprise will have been for nothing.” His throat makes a convulsive movement, and he grabs at Adil’s hand. “I can’t go back there, Adil, not even for a day; I’d rather die.”

“We’ll think of something. We’ll make a plan. You won’t go back there, I promise.”

“And after Sunday? What happens then? They’ll be watching us like hawks. And we’ll always have this threat hanging over us; if they catch us again, they really will dismiss you, clinic or no clinic, and they’ll send me back there no matter what I say.”

“How much money do you have?”

Toby blinks. “Father left everything to Freddie,” he says, a little thrown.

“But you must have some money of your own? From your job?”

“In a savings account. I’ve hardly touched it.”

“Would it be enough for a flat? Enough for you to get a flat of your own?”

Toby’s mind begins to whir. “I don’t think so. It’s only eight months’ worth of wages.”

Adil glances down at his wristwatch. “I’ve been thinking - and we haven’t time now, so I’ll say it quickly, and we can speak about it properly later – but let’s say you get the all-clear on Sunday, which I’m sure you will. Go to your mother, and tell her that while you live here, you don’t feel you can fully turn over a new leaf; you can’t truly put the past behind you. You’d like to be more independent, live closer to the office, spend more time with your colleagues, anything like that. Then ask her if she can help you with money for a flat. Then, once that’s settled, I’ll hand in my notice and look for a new job.”

“I’ll write your reference,” Toby says immediately. “But you’d have to hold off for a month or so; so they don’t get suspicious.”

“Of course. But what do you think? Do you want to carry on living here?”

Toby hesitates, but only for a moment. “No,” he says, “No, I don’t. It doesn’t feel like home anymore.”

“It’s just an idea; there isn’t any pressure-”

“No, no, I think it’s an excellent idea. Things will only get worse the longer we’re here. But I hate to think that I’ve driven you away; you’ve worked here for so long.”

“Too long,” Adil says, without sentiment. “Things will be different after the war, Toby, I know they will, and I don’t want anything more to do with small-minded people.”

“There are small-minded people everywhere.”

Tender hands cup his jaw. “And, one day, we’ll challenge them. Think of it as choosing our battles. We can’t win this one outright, not just now, so we do the next best thing and play them at their own game.”

“You’re very crafty.”

Adil kisses him. It is gentle, chaste, but when he pulls back, Toby’s chest is stuttering like a candle in a draught.

“Go on,” he says, a little unevenly, “Else you’ll get in trouble.”

“I’ll come up later, after my shift. Tom can create a diversion.”

“Don’t do anything absurd like climbing up a drainpipe.”

“I thought you’d like that. It would be romantic.”

Toby’s nose wrinkles. “There is nothing romantic about spending an evening scrubbing dirt out of a white jacket.”

“As though you’ve ever scrubbed dirt in your life.”

Toby gives him a little push, though he is smiling. “Cricket whites don’t clean themselves, you know.”

“No, you’ve got maids to do that for you.”

Toby pushes him again, and they are both laughing now. “Go downstairs, else I won’t let you in later, even if you have climbed the drainpipe.”

When the door closes behind him, Toby moves to one of the open windows. He slides it higher, as far as it will go, and leans out, taking a lungful of smoky air. The heat is heavenly on his face, and, down below, the road throbs and hums with steady lines of taxis and motorcars and a single, towering red bus. The people look delicate, like tiny dolls escaped from a dolls’ house, and Toby raises his eyes to the rooftops, the city stretching in front and behind and to the sides of him in a great web.

He feels small, smaller even than the doll-people, and somehow it is the most comforting sensation in the world.

***

On Saturday evening, Lady Hamilton dines out, and when Toby drifts across the lobby towards the bar, Freddie is immediately at his elbow.

“Do you want to go in?”

“No, I rather thought I’d sketch the scene from the doorway,” Toby longs to snap, but he is dependent on Freddie’s goodwill, and so he swallows his irritation and smiles deferentially.

“Only for a moment. If you don’t mind?”

Freddie blinks, but as Toby had hoped, he seems rather more pleased than suspicious.

“Of course. What will you drink?”

“Just water, thank you,” Toby says, and smiles demurely again until Freddie has turned his back. From across the room, he catches Adil’s eye and winks quickly. He takes a table by the stage with a clear view of the bar; he crosses his legs, his foot jerking in vague time to the music.

He allows Freddie to talk, the conversation aimless, giving the occasional nod of encouragement. He and Emma, apparently, are no longer quite seeing eye to eye, and his ears prick up when he hears his own name.

“- and she came to my suite in a towering rage and started shouting ‘How could you do this to Toby?’ for the entire hotel to hear before I’d even got the door halfway open.”

“Right,” Toby says, taking an uneasy sip of water.

“And when I finally got her inside, she called me a barbarian and said it was no wonder you were walking around looking like a PoW-”

Toby almost chokes on his drink.

“- Because apparently she was looking for a file in her father’s office, and she found your registration papers from the-” Freddie gestures in agitation- “The _clinic_ ,” he whispers, and glances around as though he had uttered a blasphemy. “She was raving about electric shocks and injections and all manner of fantastical things, and she wouldn’t believe me when I said you’d just had a bit of a natter with a psychiatrist.”

“She thought I was in Wales, then? Like everyone else?”

Toby had assumed the business had been settled in some kind of four-way meeting between the Garlands and his mother and brother.

“We wanted to contain it. We were worried she might let it slip to Betsey, and then the entire staff would know within half an hour; that’s what Mr Garland said.”

“Seems a little odd.”

“Not really, he said she lives for gossip.”

“No, that he didn’t trust his own daughter to be discreet. An Assistant Manager, no less.”

“I’m sure he was just taking precautions- for your benefit.”

“Or for his.” Toby takes a casual sip of water. “If he does have something to hide.”

Freddie licks his lips nervously. “Toby,” he says, “She is mistaken, isn’t she? There weren’t any electric shocks, or injections, were there? It was just you and a psychiatrist talking things through.”

Beneath the table, the nails of Toby’s empty hand dig tightly into his palm.

“She must have found different papers,” he says pleasantly, “For a clinic you didn’t end up sending me to. Mr Garland mustn’t have got round to clearing them out.”

Relief breaks on Freddie’s face. “I’ll tell her you said that,” he says, and laughs weakly, “I knew it must all be a misunderstanding.” He finishes the dregs of his brandy. “In fact, I’ll go now, if you don’t-”

“Actually,” Toby says, and Freddie pauses, about to rise from his seat, “I wondered whether you might do something for me. It’s a little awkward,” he says, and gives an embarrassed half-smile. “I wondered whether you might return something for me. Of Mr Joshi’s.”

Freddie’s eyebrows jump. “What sort of something?” he asks warily.

“Just a book. He lent it to me before-” Toby drops his gaze- “And I haven’t been able to return it. It would be wrong of me to keep it, and-”

He lifts his eyes a fraction, as he had practised when he had rehearsed with Adil on Tuesday night.

“- I’d like a fresh start. Get rid of everything which reminds me of my foolishness.”

He reaches into his inside chest pocket, and pulls out _Native Son_.

“He’ll know what it is. Just hand it over at the bar, and then it really will all be in the past.”

He wonders whether he might be laying it on a little thick, but Freddie’s smile is guileless as he claps him heartily on the shoulder.

“Of course,” he says, taking the book from him. “I’m proud of you.”

The sharpness pierces Toby’s chest again, but he forces a smile as Freddie turns away. Tall, resplendent in his uniform, he weaves through the maze of tables, and raises a curt hand to get Adil’s attention in a manner so very like their father. Adil accepts the book with grace, and when Toby can see Freddie’s face again, his expression is satisfied.

He thinks of the crude, pencil-drawn map, and the words scribbled on the back of Adil’s own note, slipped inside the flyleaf of the book.

_3 p.m., corner of Peveril Drive. Bring alcohol._

***

At half-past one the following afternoon, Toby descends the front steps of the hotel.

“Lovely afternoon for a stroll, Mr Hamilton,” Wilfred says, and Toby smiles back.

“Just glorious.”

He rounds the corner, and walks until the hotel is completely out of sight, then hails a taxi, which drops him at King’s Cross.

“Any luggage, sir?” the driver asks.

“I’m just meeting a friend off the train.”

“Shall I wait, sir?”

“We’ll walk, but thank you.”

The taxi drives away, and he treads the now-familiar path to The Islington Centre of Therapeutics. The weather has not cooled, but there is a pleasant breeze, and as he turns the corner of Peveril Drive the trees cast long shadows over the road. The street is quite deserted, though top-floor windows have been thrown open, and, several houses along, the head of a young woman, cigarette between her lips, pokes through a skylight.

He is greeted in the foyer by Janice, who nods at him curtly and leads him straight to Walsingham’s office. The entire building seems to sweat, the air stale and unventilated. A pedestal fan whirs uselessly beside Walsingham’s desk.

In the context of what has come before, the appointment is far from the most harrowing hour Toby has spent in the clinic; but he is required to strip, from the waist down, and his physical reactions measured in response to a variety of homosexual stimuli. Stood in a sweltering room, with the sharp eyes of two orderlies and Walsingham on him, it is not difficult for Toby to suppress the flickers of arousal, faint though they are, and even when an orderly is instructed to touch him, he is repulsed rather than stirred.

To his surprise, they move onto heterosexual stimuli, and he feels the slight pull of panic as his body remains determinedly unmoved by the images in the booklet.

“Have you been keeping up with your medication, Mr Lawrence?” Walsingham asks.

“Yes, sir,” Toby says, and, when Walsingham’s brow remains furrowed, “I just- ah- it’s a little embarrassing, sir, but I think it’s what one might call performance anxiety.”

Walsingham’s expression clears a little, and Toby is so shocked by his own quick thinking that he answers the remainder of his questions with a deferential civility. He is permitted to dress, and then the psychiatrist is brought in. He quizzes Toby on his views of marriage, then asks him to describe his ideal woman, and had the situation not been so serious he might have hooted with laughter. He describes the first woman who comes to mind, who happens to be Emma Garland, and embellishes her with a number of Adil’s characteristics. They discuss, almost companionably, how he might go about finding this woman, until Walsingham clears his throat, and the psychiatrist shakes his hand before an orderly shows him out.

Once they are alone, Walsingham turns to him, one pale eyebrow slightly arched.

“What are your plans, Mr Lawrence?”

“Sir?”

“A healthy young man like you ought to be looking for a commission.”

Toby smiles tightly. “You might say I’ve been otherwise engaged.”

Walsingham eyes him, and Toby once again has the sensation of being appraised; before he pulls open a drawer of his desk and takes out a slip of pale blue paper. He signs it quickly, and pushes the slip and pen across the desk.

“Confirmation of discharge,” Walsingham says. “If you could sign and date, please.”

Blood rushes to Toby’s head, and his hands tremble slightly as he signs the slip. He pushes it back across the desk.

Walsingham holds out his hand. “Keep up the good work, Mr Lawrence. Relapse is possible, but you know where we are.”

“Indeed.” Toby grasps his hand firmly in the knowledge that he will never set foot in the office again. “Good afternoon, Doctor Walsingham.”

“Good afternoon.”

***

Adil is skulking in the shade of a poplar when Toby emerges at ten-past three.

“So?” he says anxiously, pulling Toby out of the sun, “What did they say?”

“Full discharge,” Toby says, and a grin spreads over his face. “You won’t believe some of the things they asked me; it was all I could do not to laugh in their faces.”

Adil starts forward, as though to embrace him, but Toby holds up his hands.

“Not here,” he says quickly, “Let’s go to Highbury Fields.”

“It’ll be busy.”

“I don’t care.” Toby laughs, short and high and loud. “God, I don’t care. Let’s go to Highbury Fields and lie under the trees and-”

“And celebrate?”

Adil holds out a bottle of whiskey wrapped in a towel, and he laughs himself at the expression on Toby’s face.

“God, yes.”

***

It takes three weeks to secure a suitable flat. Lady Hamilton, who had been surprisingly amenable to the plan, fusses in her cool, spiky way about air raids, and sniffs at any residence which would require him to take refuge in a public shelter. Eventually, however, they settle on a set of rooms in Eaton Square, which, though not in the very grandest part of Belgravia, is only a half-hour walk from his office on Whitehall, and half an hour on the Underground from Adil’s flat in Paddington. The flat is large, with one bedroom, an indoor bathroom, a small kitchen, and two rooms in which to entertain. The décor is pale and tasteful, with tall white windows which look out onto wide, clean pavements and a large, neat garden in the centre of the square.

“But how will you manage on your own?” Lady Hamilton had asked, her eyes following the removal men shrewdly as they had staggered into the bedroom with a crate of books.

“I’m not completely helpless, Mother. We didn’t have maids at Oxford, you know. And a charlady will come twice a week-”

“But what will you _eat_?”

Their escape, therefore, had been a gradual one, but by mid-July Toby is settled and living alone for the first time. The flat is closer to The Halcyon than Paddington, and so Adil spends most nights there after his late shifts, taking the key from beneath the doormat and slipping into bed beside Toby, who dozes, half-naked, in the balmy evening heat. He sleeps better, now he is free from the medication – they had taken grim delight in burning the booklet of images on the stove – but on nights without Adil he often lies awake, perturbed by the quiet, ears straining for the drone of traffic and the squeal of brass from the floors below.

He goes to the barber’s. He allows Lady Hamilton to drag him to Savile Row one weekend to purchase some new clothes. He even replaces his battered briefcase. As July melts into August, he knows he ought to feel better; stronger.

He has lived in Eaton Square for three weeks when they first attempt intercourse. True to his word, he has made sure to take great care of Adil since his discharge, dropping to his knees so often that Adil, when they were both still at The Halcyon, had joked that he felt like a car requiring constant servicing. Toby’s rage had been ice-cold, but the row that followed had been blazing, and they had very nearly been discovered when a guest had knocked angrily on the door and threatened to report them to the Manager if they didn’t quieten down. Their liaisons had been more hesitant after that, but by early August it has been three months since they have last moved together properly, and though Toby’s seduction is stilted, and he does not allow Adil to touch between his legs, and he washes himself with a cold flannel in the bathroom rather than be brought to completion, the episode is not entirely unpleasant.

“You're wonderful,” Adil had whispered sleepily in his ear when he had returned to bed, but when Toby had woken the next morning, Adil had not been there.

“Aren’t you a ray of sunshine,” Miss Edwards had said drily, when he threw himself behind his desk at one minute to nine. His skin had shone red from being scrubbed raw in the bath.

“He’s lovesick,” Thompson had said wisely.

“You’d know all about that,” York had said, whilst Miss Edwards clicked her tongue, and the office might have descended into pandemonium again had the C.O. not appeared in the doorway to inform them all cheerfully that Mussolini’s son had just been killed in a plane-crash at the age of twenty-three.

Toby had seethed silently for the rest of the day, and when Adil had slipped into the flat at half-past eleven that night, they had had perhaps their worst row ever.

“I know it was bloody awful, Adil, I’m not a half-wit, but you might have had the decency to tell me to me face!”

“I had to go home before work! I told you that! I _told_ you I would have to leave early-”

“Didn’t wake me, though, did you? Couldn’t face me after the shambles I made of last night-”

“It was early; I wanted to let you rest. And it wasn’t a shambles, it was wonderful-”

“Why can’t you admit it? Let’s stop with the games and the pretences and admit that last night was a bloody balls-up-”

“Toby-”

“- And that the reason you left this morning was because I repulse you.”

Adil had looked appalled. “Don’t say that, please.”

“I am dirty and disgusting a-and contaminated and I don’t know how you can stand to touch me, to breath the same air as me-”

“Toby, please calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down!” Toby’s throat had burned from shouting. “Last night was _mortifying_. And there is no way for me to get clean again; there is no way I can ever, possibly be good enough for you again. And that is why you left this morning.”

They had talked late that night, well into the hours of the morning. Adil had been a paragon of patience, stating clearly and unequivocally that under no account did he think Toby was dirty, or disgusting, or contaminated, and that last night had been wonderful simply for the chance to lie close to him again, and that what had happened in the treatment room made him neither weak nor repellent. Toby had listened, and nodded, and had tried to believe him.

August rolls on. Toby dines at The Halcyon once a week, on Adil’s night off, and always finds him waiting in the sitting room when he arrives home. On the unbearably hot nights, when their tangled legs slip together with sweat, and the huge bedroom window lets in more midges than breeze, they take long, cool baths, crammed together in the small tub. Toby smokes, cigarette after cigarette crumbling to ash between his fingers, and they take turns to swig from a bottle of whiskey, until their kisses are slow and messy with fatigue.

“You could talk to someone,” Adil suggests, his eyes half-lidded. “A priest?”

“It’s just the heat.”

Adil reaches out and laces together their fingers, shrivelled with damp.

“I can see your ribs, darling,” he says quietly. “You aren’t well.”

“It’s the light reflecting off the tiles: makes even you look a little ghoulish.”

The water cools against their flesh. Goosebumps rise on Toby’s chest, and through the open door of the bathroom, he hears the clock in the sitting room chime quarter to two.

“I’m trying,” he says, softly, so as not to break the hush which has settled over them. “My sort of people- well, we like to look the other way and pretend whatever it is hasn’t happened. We aren’t much good at dealing with things; at facing them.”

“You don’t have to face this on your own.”

“I know,” Toby says, and squeezes his fingers quickly, “And I’m so grateful. But you must never feel- obligated, I suppose the word is; you must never feel obligated to stay. If this isn’t making you happy, or- or it isn’t what you want.”

“Are you being foolish and noble again?”

Toby smiles a little. “Perhaps. Mostly I just want to be honest. I’m not a particularly brave person, I don’t think; I’ve got brains, and nerve, and strength, perhaps, in some respects. But until now, given the choice, I’d take flight over fight every time. It isn’t a quality I particularly like about myself. You,” he says, and trails a foot up Adil’s calf, water sloshing quietly against the sides of the bath, “You’re a fighter. You don’t let me run away.”

“Toby, what you did for me – for _us_ – makes you one of the bravest people I know. You fought for us. You fought for me.”

“I didn’t fight, I endured. It isn’t the same.”

“You didn’t let them send me away. You didn’t let them drive us apart. And, after everything they did to you, you’re still here. Naked. In the bath. With a man.” He smiles. “I’d call that fighting.”

His grip tightens on Toby’s hand.

“We will get there, Toby. However long it takes. We won’t let them win.”

On the final Saturday in August, Toby telephones his mother, who has a habit of dropping in without warning, to inform her that he has a slight head-cold, and will be spending the day resting. Adil, who is working out his notice at The Halcyon, having secured a new position at The Savoy, arrives just after lunch; they throw open every window in the flat, draw down the blinds against mosquitoes, and carry Toby’s gramophone through from the sitting room. The curtains in the bedroom are half-drawn, and they disrobe gradually, leisurely, a bottle of gin on ice, the brass of Glenn Miller’s _Tuxedo Junction_ blaring low and dirty as they stumble towards the unmade bed.

Toby is dizzy from the heat; he loathes London in August, loathes the dirt and the stench and the dry, cracked pavements, but as their hands glide over each other, slick with sweat, there is a pull, deep and urgent behind his navel, and his hand tightens in Adil’s hair as he presses upwards, their mouths locked, moving against Adil’s hipbone. His other hand, flat-palmed, presses down on Adil’s lower back; the skin is damp, and his nails leave indents as he pushes upwards again, teeth scraping against Adil’s throat.

Want has not pulled at him so strongly since before the clinic. The corner of his right eye begins to twitch; he ignores it, continues to move, to press, and a noise is torn, unbidden, from his throat as Adil reaches down between them.

“Does it hurt?” he whispers.

It does, a little; as though the hand touching him is not soft flesh but sandpaper.

“Keep going,” he says. “Please.”

They shift a little, until Toby is lying flat, and Adil is on his side, their foreheads just touching. Adil’s right hand creeps downwards again, and he laces the fingers of his left with Toby’s, the heel of his palm pressing it against the pillow, a little above his head.

“Could you- don’t hold me down.”

Adil pulls back, nonplussed. Toby tugs at their interlocked hands, and Adil’s fingers slip away as quickly as if he had been burned.

“I swear I wasn’t-”

“No, I know.” Toby tries to smile at him. “Kiss me?”

Adil leans down, and his free hand now curls over the top of Toby’s head, pulling gently at the ends of his hair. Toby shifts slightly until he can feel Adil against his thigh, wanting him all around him.

“Does it still hurt?”

“Only a little.”

“Out of ten?”

Adil’s hand has quickened slightly.

“Four. No, three. Three and a half.”

The hand slows.

“Shall we stop?”

“No. Just- kiss me again.”

He kisses Toby delicately, as though his lips were blown glass. When he moves down to his throat, his hand tightens, and Toby’s eye begins to twitch again. He breaths steadily, his chest catching, and begins to count the number of fans on the ceiling mouldings above his bed.

“Stay with me, Toby.”

“What?”

“Stay present.”

“I _am_ present,” he says, a little snappishly.

“You really can’t stand being told what to do, can you?” Adil is grinning. “Just- don’t drift off. Don’t numb yourself to it.”

“I won’t. Keep going.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“It’s all in my head.”

Toby is fully aroused now, but each wave of pleasure is followed by a spike of pain, sharp like a bee-sting, and suddenly Adil is too close, his hand too firm, his body too hot.

“Look at me.”

Toby hadn’t realised he had scrunched his eyes closed. He rests a hand awkwardly on Adil’s waist, and the touch between his legs is soft now, barely-there.

“You’re so tense. Relax.”

“I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Is this alright?” Toby asks. “For you?”

“Of course. More than.”

“I’m sorry it’s taking so long.”

“Just relax.”

“This is alright, isn’t it?”

“I’ve said-”

“No, I mean-”

Adil twists his wrist, and Toby’s breath hitches.

“- This isn’t wrong, is it?”

“Not at all.”

“And we’re safe here.”

“Completely.”

“And you don’t- you don’t think I’m-”

Adil kisses him, fierce and hurried. The record on the gramophone has finished, and the crackle of static fills Toby’s ears as the hand in his hair pulls harder, the hand between his legs moving faster; and now something is building, the dark, coiling heat behind his navel rippling outwards urgently until his entire body trembles.

“I can’t- I can’t-”

“Do you want to stop?”

“No.”

“Don’t fight it.”

The heat rushes through him until it feels as though his very skin vibrates with it. His hand tightens on Adil’s waist, his other hand twisting in the bedclothes; Adil shifts slightly, the smooth turns of his hand quickening, growing more erratic, until the warm flesh of his thigh presses ever-so-gently upwards as he gives another, persistent twist.

The tendons of Toby’s neck stand out as he releases, the arch of his back pushing out his ribcage until the sharp grooves deepen further. For long, blissful seconds, the world narrows to Adil’s hands on his body and the blinding, pulsating heat.

“You’re a marvel,” Adil is saying, as he quivers with after-shocks, “An absolute marvel.”

They lie in silence, sweat and fluid drying on their skin, sun-streaked from the gap in the curtains. In the square below, a motorcar starts, and the trees in the garden murmur in the rush of cool breeze, which catches in the curtains until they billow against the backs of their legs.

“Thank you,” Toby says, once the drone of the motorcar has died away, and there is quiet once more.

“I wouldn’t rank it as my best work.”

Toby jabs him lazily with the point of his toe. “I should hope not. I don’t care for being ordered about.”

“Now, we both know that’s not quite true,” Adil says, his voice low and suddenly close to his ear. The kiss presses Toby back against the mattress, and Adil’s full weight, though not quite holding him down, keeps him beneath him.

“Not yet,” Toby says breathlessly, when he pulls back, “I need a bath first, you animal.”

“But you’re only going to get dirty again.”

“Then I’ll take another one.”

“Seems like a terrible waste of water. There is a war on, you know.”

Toby extracts himself firmly from Adil’s grip. “Either you can join me in the bath, and I can repay the lovely favour you just did for me, or you can sit out here all on your own.”

He clambers to his feet with as much grace as his loose-limbed nudity permits.

“Now, be a darling and go and run it for me. I need to make a telephone call.”

“To who?”

“School friend. George Wilton. His father owns The Criterion. I want us to have dinner there tonight.”

Adil blinks. “Together?”

“Well, we’d have to put up a show of respectability; but yes, together.”

“I’m on duty at five o’clock.”

“You’ve got a head-cold. There’s a great deal of it about at the moment.”

“Oh, have I, indeed?”

“Yes, you have.” Toby pulls Adil up from the bed, almost light-headed with giddiness. “Yes, you damn well have.”

“Suppose we’re seen?”

“Suppose the sky falls down? Suppose a bomb drops on us? Suppose it’s the Second Coming and the descent of the heavenly hosts causes the most almighty traffic jam?”

“Alright,” Adil says, and laughs, and Toby laughs too, and for several minutes they can do nothing but clutch at each other, palms hot and eyes wet as they laugh loud enough to be heard on the pavement.

“I’d better call George,” Toby says eventually, still giggling wetly. He moves to the gramophone, and flips the record to place the needle on the B-side. The dramatic opening chords of _Pennsylvania 6-5000_ is enough to set them off again.

“Go on!” Adil says, pushing him towards the door. “I’ll draw the bath.”

“You’re an angel,” Toby calls; then, when he is halfway to the sitting room, “And bring the bloody gin.”

Outside, the sun refracts in line upon line of glass windowpanes, until Eaton Square shimmers in the afternoon light.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The beast is finally complete! Thank you so much to everyone who has made it this far, and to all those who commented and left kudos - your kind words are so greatly appreciated. I do hope you enjoyed, and thank you for reading.


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